


The Boy Who Fell into a Book (Part One)

by Jld71, write_light



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Romance, Awkward Romance, Blood and Violence, Derek Hale Loves Stiles Stilinski, Gothic, Horror, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski Loves Derek Hale, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 15:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15799707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jld71/pseuds/Jld71, https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: Stiles’ curiosity collides with an ancient Hale curse - is it really so surprising that he finds himself trapped forever inside a book in the secret Hale library? Derek’s sacrifice to rescue Stiles from this fate only makes things worse, and Stiles’ next moves could make everything -much- worse.  The only way out is to not let this become some epic tale of love and longing - but Stiles and Derekaren’t in love, right?  Right?  A little bitTeen Wolf, a little bitTwilight Zone, a little bitHotel California- the Gothic romance Stiles and Derek were made for.art:by jld71beta: seleneheartmain warnings: horror, violence, blood; magical!Stiles; cliffhanger endingpdf:box.com(All chapters in one file and font/color/layout variations).





	1. The Boy Who Fell into a Book

 

**THE BOY WHO FELL INTO A BOOK**

**story by write_light**

**series cover art by lightthesparks**

**part one art by jld71**

* * *

 

 

_Once upon a time, in the darkest shelter of the forest,_

_far from the winding ribbon of river that wrapped around their village and kept it safe,_

_two boys found each other._

_One of those boys was fearless, wild and unpredictable_ _-_

_people should have been wary of such danger._

_The other boy was a werewolf, and not a poor wild one like many of his kind._

_But the world soon turned love into longing,_

_hope into desperation._

_They wanted their story to go ever on, and it did, alas,_

_darker with every page._

_As for the Book, well . . . settle in,_

_for that will take time to recount,_

_and I am loath to tell stories_

_now that I know what may be listening._

* * *

 

 

_**The Boy Who Fell into a Book** _

 

 

_The remnants of Hale House  
_

"You could have said goodbye. Before you just fell off the face of the earth. You could have - _you know -_ glared at me one last time."

Stiles flung another small stone up at the high, unbroken window and it bounced off. The cry of the glass rang through the Preserve, followed by silence. He didn’t wonder why a house that had burned down still had one intact window, any more than he wondered if he should be breaking it.

"Yeah, I'm hitting your house, Derek. Come stop me.”

 

***

 

_The Stilinski kitchen_

Derek Hale was gone – from Hale House where he’d grown up, from Beacon Hills, from the world that Stiles could see and hear and touch. He’d checked police records for weeks, spent more than he would ever admit for phone calls, and in general slept poorly and now his father had dragged him from bed far too early for something as unimportant as school.

Stiles knew Derek had things to work out. _Wolf things_.

“But I still want him around to talk to,” Stiles mumbled.

“Why? What’s he got to say to you that he hasn’t said before?” the Sheriff asked.

The sun wasn’t up yet, and apparently Stiles’ mouth was having a conversation with his father that his overtired brain wasn’t fully attending to.

“That he likes me; that’s not so hard to say, is it?” Stiles’ mouth continued.

His brain, however, became wildly aware of the situation as the words ‘ _likes me_ ’ escaped, and panic alarms rang. His father was giving him a strange look over his cup of coffee, strange even for Stiles.

Stiles held his breath.

“Scott can’t want you to tutor him _every_ night, even if he likes the results,” his father said, and Stiles’ brain turned off the alarm.

 _Talking about Scott, right._ “Gotta go, Dad.”

“Don’t spend too much time buried in your books.”

“You know me,” he said, dashing out the door.

When the door shut, the Sheriff said quietly, “After all these years, I’m not 100% sure I do.”

 

***

 

Stiles had been hovering around Hale House for many nights and many days, hoping to piece together every trace of Derek’s beautiful, ruined childhood he could find. His conversations with the absent wolf-man had gotten repetitive, and Stiles had fallen silent, which surprised even him. Still, his mouth worked, curling around his pain, twisting open then snapping shut on things he wanted to ask, to tell, to make sure Derek _knew_.

This night he stood on the porch of Hale House in the rain, too scared to go in yet hoping desperately to get caught again by Derek.

"I'm on your _private property_ , you glowering sociopath in a leather jacket. Which you should wear more often, it looks good on you." His voice trailed off.

As he leaned forlornly against the wall, the burnt-out remnants of the house loomed dark and damaged behind him, like Derek. He even imagined a presence near the basement windows and shivered, wishing peace for Talia and the rest.

Stiles could feel a familiar itch as his brain kicked into gear. He jumped from the porch, landing awkwardly, and picked up another small rock, then turned and threw it harder this time, with intention. The small high window resisted with a louder ringing sound – apart from his heart the loudest thing out there - but then it shattered.

Stiles stared at it for the longest time, surprised, briefly worried, but also pleased with himself. Then he broke in.

 

***

 

Stiles nearly missed his first class the next day, for what he was sure was the very best reason ever, but not one he could tell anyone but Scott. They weren’t alone until after practice, when Stiles spilled the whole story in hushed, excited tones by Scott’s hall locker.

"You didn't go _inside_ , did you?” Scott asked, concerned.

Stiles' eyes rolled back, taking his head along with them.

"Of course I didn’t,” he lied. _Not that Derek would care_. "And what if I did? Is there some werewolf alarm that only Derek could hear? If it could bring him back-"

"He'll be back sooner or later," Scott said weakly, no longer believing it either.

"How do you _know_ that?!"

Scott had no answer for the look Stiles was giving him.

"CALL HIM-" Scott said, for the tenth time that week.

"I have been... I got voicemail, and then weird error messages in Spanish, or nothing. Anyway, there's this unburned part of his house, upstairs."

"You _did_ go inside," Scott said, wondering why he ever believed the first thing out of Stiles' mouth any more.

"The inside is damaged, but there's an upstairs window that never broke. _Until justrecently anyway_. I just can’t find the door to that room. Well I didn’t have time, it was already nearly 2 a.m. We can go back tonight-”

"Stay out, or I'll tell your dad you aren’t really tutoring me," Scott threatened.

Stiles laughed out loud.

“Okay, I’ll tell him exactly how you make him _think_ you’re in bed when you sneak out.”

The laughter faded to a cocky grin.

“Way ahead of you, and him, on that one. Back-up excuses for my excuses. Alibi videos- “

"I'll tell him how you really feel about Derek."

Stiles’ smile vanished instantly, his eyes wide.

"You- you _wouldn't_!” Stiles said harshly, looking around at the busy school hallway. “Wait, what exactly would you tell him?”

Scott’s relief evaporated as quickly as Stiles’ bravado had, and his shoulders slumped with his head.

“How _do_ I feel about Derek?”

"STILINSKI! MCCALL! GET TO CLASS!"

“Yes, Coach,” they said, heading off to Chemistry.

“ _Stilinski!”_

“Yes, Coach?”

“Quit _pining_! Never love anything except the _goal_.” He wandered off down the hall muttering “And God knows, you’re not even making that relationship work.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

Stiles stood there staring down the hall until the second bell rang.

 

***

 

On his way to school the next day, Stiles found himself in a fully out-loud and deeply animated conversation with the absent Derek, something Scott had begged him not to do in public and especially not while driving. The conversations were not always one-sided; Stiles filled in Derek's part in a gruff tone that made him feel good inside. Oddly though, these arguments never went well for Stiles.

Stiles pulled off the road to get an extra-large coffee, handed to him by a woman too old and too happy to be stuck in a coffee kiosk in a supermarket parking lot.

"You look lost," she said.

"What? No, I live here. Just a bit tired."

“Everyone has an interesting story to tell, but ‘I’m just a bit tired’ is no page-turner.”

“I’m just waiting for someone. Who may not even know I’m waiting.”

“There’s your story,” she said, and winked at him.

The blazing hot coffee distracted Stiles; he slipped it into the cupholder as fast as he could. The woman was leaning out the other side of her kiosk now, chatting with someone who looked like Derek. It wasn’t Derek.

Not long after he pulled back onto the road, Stiles realized he was going the wrong direction, and _was_ in fact lost. Gradually the houses faded to trees on each side and he realized he was closer to Hale House than he was to Beacon Hills High. This was going to make him late again, but he drove toward the house with the mystery room and mystery window.

There would be plenty of time to go to school, plenty of days without Derek. The coffee cooled slowly.

 

***

 

Hale House looked strangely pale that day, the morning sun emphasizing its graying remnants against the burned beams and black char; blotches of decay had begun to take over the exposed areas. Stiles left the Jeep hidden in back and went around to the door. The steps creaked and sagged precariously under him, and he leapt up to the porch. The door offered no more resistance this time than the night before; his father’s padlocks were some of the easiest to pick.

"Note to self: tell Dad that the county isn't locking up its abandoned houses well enough.” _Then tell him I just know this somehow._

Inside, the cool darkness defied the sun to come further in than necessary and briefly stilled his mental chatter; eventually he started talking _to_ the house. It had clues to Derek's disappearance, he was sure, and to why Derek hadn’t spoken to him since leaving. Derek's past filled the place, tragedy upon tragedy that Stiles hadn't wanted to ask about, but now wished he had.

"Where'd you go, big guy? You been hiding out here all along?" he asked loudly, but the house was no more responsive than Derek himself. It watched him silently, he imagined, with Derek’s penetrating gaze.

Stiles became angrier with each empty area that opened before him, hoping to see a tall shadow, a terrifying werewolf with jaws full of sharpened daggers and eyes that looked deep into him for breathless seconds.

"I'm missing Chemistry for you!" Stiles roared into the darkness.

The house was oppressively silent as well as dark, loud in his ears it was so quiet, and then suddenly full of noises – creaks from several directions (the wind, he told himself), a muffled clang (the pipes?), and then silence again, even worse after the brief interruption.

"Scott, you lucky bastard, getting a B+ on today's quiz, when you could be here with me in the creepiest house ever."

At the top of the wide staircase on the left, a black hole gaped all the way down into the basement, where the fire had burned through Derek's home and family. There had been rooms there, on his left, and if there was any symmetry, he estimated seven rooms in all. Each remaining door was flanked by a wall lamp, each small, round bulb now dark or broken.

He saw no seventh door, but the hall vanished off into gloom.

_It has to be here._

Stiles slid his hand out along the wall ahead of him, hoping for a doorknob. His fingers started to tingle a few inches into the darkness and he drew them back. He reached out again, sliding his fingers along the smooth wall, and closed his eyes.

He could see a younger Derek running past him along the hall, using his hand to swing himself around the doorframe into an open room. He longed to follow Derek inside. A tiny whoosh, like a seal breaking, made Stiles freeze, and close his eyes even tighter.

“Stop, Derek!”

Stiles didn’t recognize the voice; it was a woman, and she was displeased.

Stiles opened his eyes and was alone again, in the dim hallway. There was a door now, the knob waiting beneath his outstretched fingertips. This seventh room was different, Stiles realized quickly. Every other door had been open, but now he could see faint light from a window spilling under the door into the hall.

He withdrew his hand slowly and pulled himself up against the wall to listen, willing the room to be empty. _Except maybe for Derek_. He reached out for the doorknob after a few seconds and turned it slowly.

The room _was_ empty, of people at least, but tall shelves, packed with hundreds and hundreds of books, crowded in from all sides. He inhaled loudly in wonder at the small fortress of paper - even above the door, and framing the now-shattered window.

Barely four feet remained for him to move between the shelves on each side, but they ran all the way to the window far in the back, where it was still bright morning. Interrupting the shelves on the right side were two large armchairs and a small table with a mica-shaded lamp.

"The Super-Sekrit Hale Library…” he marveled. “What’s your story? How did you not burn? Do you maybe have a map of where Derek is?" Stiles asked the room.

It didn't reply immediately.

 

***

 

Book after book pulled from the shelves revealed nothing, apart from a predilection for philosophy, Hale family history, bestiaries, and a few truly ancient books that were alchemy or sorcery - or worse. Over all of the books and furniture was a thin layer of dust but no smell of smoke. High in the far corner, Stiles' eye caught on a book with a dull gray spine, a fraction taller than its neighbors, no title.

“You’re just _trying_ to blend in,” he said, after studying it carefully. He stretched for it but even his height and long fingers put him nowhere close. He moved one of the armchairs over and climbed, momentarily distracted by the odd books that now became visible to him.

Cheap paperbacks filled a shelf, all well-worn, all with Laura's name handwritten inside the cover. _Her Secret Self_ was one, _Too Young for Love_ was another.

"I wish I'd met you," he mumbled as he placed them back carefully. “I have a lot of questions about your brother. Cora never told me any stories, and Peter is just… ‘WTF, Peter?’ - Sorry, didn’t mean to bring him up,” he apologized.

Stiles returned to his pursuit of the gray book, stretching up until he'd run his fingertips along the spine. Just when he was at the limit of his reach, the chair below him tilted treacherously. He scrambled for balance, standing again as slowly as he could, searching for handholds on the shelves if the chair betrayed him again.

He reached high up and took hold of the book, but it refused to come loose. He tugged it out, down, sideways, and finally pushed it back in, frustrated; it agreed to this and sank back into line with the others, knocking something metallic into place behind the wall. There was a sharp crack and an eerie sound following it. Stiles, startled, slipped off the top of the chair, cursing as he landed awkwardly on the seat cushion, bent but not broken. He looked around the room, but nothing seemed to have changed except for the cloud of dust that made him sneeze dramatically.

When he stood, he noticed it.

"You _do_ have a story to tell me," he said softly, all memory of school and quizzes now gone.

 

***

 

A tiny shelf had appeared, barely half an inch high, but right at eye level as he stood back up on the chair. He couldn't recall what had been hiding it from view before. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing gone missing.

On that narrow shelf lay a small dark case, pocket-sized. Stiles slid it out carefully with his fingers and held it in his hands, curious beyond words. On the shelf behind it was a small lock now eaten through, like an old, corroded battery. He looked the case over and found two holes where the lock had fit.

“Time to share one of your secret diaries with me, Cora. Sorry. Or one of _yours_ , Derek. _Not_ sorry."

Outside the day wore on, the tiny room warming in the sun, reminding Stiles that he was already very late for third period. He looked down once at his Jeep, but wasn’t about to leave.

“This is so much more important than covalent bonds - especially if it gives me information about you, Derek.”

Stiles opened the case and found inside a smaller rectangle, tightly wrapped all round with cloth, sturdy plastic tape over that. He settled into the chair closer to the window and tried pulling the wrapping off. It remained sealed. He slit the tape open with his keys, eager to find out what the Hales kept hidden in a secret compartment in a secret room.

To his surprise, he recognized the symbol Derek had tattooed on his back, hand-drawn on the outermost layer. Beneath it were layers upon layers more, each with an increasing odor of age and long isolation.

Hidden deep at the heart of it all, Stiles unwrapped a small book, a palm-sized miniature. It was bound in a thin layer of tree bark, the thinnest translucent and flexible wood, latching into itself like a lock. The book resisted being opened, and cracked loudly several times as Stiles pried the covers apart. The dust and lack of coffee made his head ache as he struggled. Angry, he yanked the edges apart, slicing two fingers on the sharp corner and drawing blood.

“Damn it,” he cursed, bringing his fingers to his lips.

In his other hand, the book then unfolded, page after page of illustrations and words, tiny but richly detailed, fanning out as if showing itself off.

The title page was faded almost to illegibility against the yellowed background, but as he took it toward the sun that poured in the window, he was able to make out a few words printed in French – _Contes_ , which he knew was "stories", the word "de Halys" in a scrawled hand, then several other words he had no understanding of. Some sounded ominous, others vaguely tasty, and his stomach wished he’d eaten breakfast.

The book had what could have been chapters or separate tales, each but a page long. The pages were worn with age at the start, but each following page grew more vivid, built of dark letters and illustrated with crude woodblock scenes and surreal images that made little sense. On one page, a river ox-bowed around a tiny town on a hill; on another, a baby lay forgotten on a doorstep. The images seemed like they would suit no story at all, they were so random; others unsettled and unnerved him.

The first was written in a form of French he couldn't translate, a later one in Polish, another in incredibly formal English that read like Abraham Lincoln’s writings. He tried to read each page more carefully, relaxing slowly as the chair grew more comfortable and the quiet of the house receded into the distance.

At the seventh and final story, a crude woodcut of a wolf's head stopped him. Its mouth faced up, the long tongue red against the black fur. Beside it was a woman’s terrified face, but the wolf looked even more frightened. All around were handwritten sentences in Spanish, blurred by water; the page crinkled like paper wetted then dried. He slid his fingertips across the wolf’s jaws and closed his eyes, imagining Derek’s transformation.

Behind his eyelids, the light from the window was a warm, diffuse pink, yet it flickered briefly, like a person had passed by. Stiles opened his eyes with a start, expecting to see Derek moving through the room, but he was as alone as before. The disappointment was immense. _Is he off chasing Kate, or dead at the hands of hunters, or_ _just not that into you,_ his mind offered.

The room was still warm but the sun was not shining in the window; now it was coming from across the hall, warm yellow late afternoon light.

Stiles returned to the first page of the book, oblivious to the sun and the time. He looked closely again at the story that wrapped around the image in sharply squared-off lettering.

He scanned the page, trying to sound out the archaic French, but the story made no more sense than the others - a wolf and a human, a full moon, and around the edges, lines like tree roots reached out to the edges of the page.

Stiles’ eyes were closing again, and the book pressed against his heart as he drew his arms around himself. He needed the rest after only two hours of sleep the night before.

"Talk to me, Derek," he said under his breath as he dozed off.

He sensed the light through his lids shifting again, but he was sinking into the chair, floating slowly up and down in consciousness, his mind returning to Derek, and to werewolves.

 

***

 

 

> Two dark wolves ran through the jungle night, one larger, one smaller and more agile. The foliage dripped with rain from the evening storms, now cleared. Even so, the wolves were sure-footed as they raced each other.
> 
> The larger one stumbled suddenly and its legs buckled, sending it tumbling down a slope into the undergrowth. Black fur one moment, pale skin and blue eyes flaring the next, claws out to stop himself.
> 
> The other wolf trotted back and shifted to stand upright, looking down at her brother.
> 
> “You out of practice?” Cora joked. “I mean, I just learned this, but you’ve-”
> 
> “No NO!” Derek shouted in the darkness, struggling to stand but failing. “Can’t-” Derek forced out, closing his eyes against the pain.
> 
> “Derek, what’s happening?” Cora rushed to his side. “Your tattoo is - _glowing_?!”
> 
> “Our library” was all he could force out, eyes flashing blue again as he turned to look up at her.
> 
> “You have a magic triskele signal? For overdue books?” She joked to cover the panic she could feel inside - sheer terror radiated from her brother.
> 
> “ _Stiles!_ ”

 

  
***

 

Stiles awoke in the darkened room. Was it dusk? He stumbled to the window in disbelief but it was very late now indeed. The sun had set and he could only just make out the nearest trees from the light that shone out of the house's many windows.

"Holy- all _day_?" He rubbed his face with one hand and was slapped by the heavy cloth of his sleeve; when he tried to brush it away, he tore his face against metal buttons and yelped in pain.

He held both hands out and saw the long, flared cuffs, huge and costume-like, dark brown velvet covering both arms, and large tarnished silver buttons.

"What the-? This isn't- I'm-" Nothing made it better, nothing made sense.

He whirled around and saw a candelabra burning on a tiny round table. The chairs were different, the books were gone, and in their place, a small bedroom had taken up the space, complete with a tiny bed and an oddly-leaning side desk.

"Wrong house. This isn't good." Stiles grabbed the candelabra and swung it around to see his new world, the flames guttering and nearly going out. "Ohhhh not good at all."

He ran to the window again, but there was no jeep, only a large portico off what was now the front of the house. The fingers on his free hand were twitching, his mind trying to make sense of it, when he heard the horses.

He shook his head violently and stared. The candles wavered, but the room stayed put, and his head began to ache again. From out of the gloom of the forest, two gray horses drawing a grand black coach came racing toward the house, and in the near dark he watched them pull to a sudden stop. A footman with a lantern opened the door and stood stiffly aside.

"Wrong _century_. _Very_ not good. What did your house do to me, Derek?!"

As the guests disembarked, one elderly woman looked up toward Stiles and he pressed himself back against the wall. Against the black night the unbroken window reflected the seven small points of candlelight.

Behind him came a loud, sharp rap on the door, five times in rapid succession. He flinched and froze with one hand on the cold window glass, one raising the candelabra to defend himself in some way that he couldn't quite picture. The door was still shut, at least. Two more knocks, louder, rattled the door visibly.

"Dinner, sir. Our hostess is expecting us."

A man's voice, odd accent, no one he recognized. Footsteps moved off down the hall. Not one word more, just the invitation, as if it were quite normal. Stiles' heart was pounding now, and his breath was short. He tried to calm himself, but the room around him only reinforced that he was not in his own clothes, not in Hale House, not anywhere that was possible to be.

He remembered to hold his breath to ease the panic, and it worked, for the moment. When the dizziness passed, he approached the door and listened carefully, then turned the handle slowly. It squeaked on its hinges. Stiles peered out. The hall was lit, albeit dimly, and there was music off in the distance, many rooms away. He opened the door wider and looked out. _Nobody._ He stepped out into the hall and looked up and down. It could have been Hale House, except-

"Except there are people and music and lights and I need to calm down or –" He wheezed, bracing himself on the wall under one of the lamps.

When he was able to stand up again, he took two steps and jumped back at the sight of another person moving beside him.

"Okay, a giant mirror, just what you want in a creepy hallway OH MY GOD I look ridiculous!"

He examined himself up and down in the dim reflection. The suit was from another century, over a tan vest with even more dull silver buttons down the front. The frock coat was trimmed in buttons down both long front lapels and on the cuffs. The pants were simple, the shoes silly, he thought, all buckles and heels.

"But I'm still me, right? Stiles Stilinski. Dreaming – yeah okay, dreaming, let's go with that. Fell asleep in the library, woke up in my dream. So why am I dreaming _this_? Wake up, wake UP!" He felt the panic returning. "Okay, not dreaming. Time travel? Right, happens every day. 'Derek, did you know you have a time portal upstairs?' Shit, where's my phone?”

He patted his pockets twice, but they held nothing.

There were voices down the corridor now, and the music was growing louder.

 

***

 

 

> “Derek, what’s going on? The library burned with the rest of it.”
> 
> “No,” he gasped with the effort of speaking, and of admitting this to Cora.
> 
> “You kept that from me?!”
> 
> “Mom - gave me a task. I’ve failed her,” he said, with a look on his face that broke her heart.
> 
> Cora hugged him for a long time; she understood Hale tasks, including her own.
> 
> “I have to fix this,” Derek said after a moment, his voice stronger, less broken.
> 
> “What does Stiles have to do with this?”
> 
> “No one else is that clever and that stupid at the same time.”
> 
> “Uncle Peter is -”
> 
> “Not even Peter … I have to get back. I can save him.”
> 
> “From what?”
> 
> Derek took her face in her hands and stared intensely at her for so long she wanted to look away.
> 
> “I have to get home,” was all he said.
> 
> Around them, the jungle was loud and alive, strong with the smell of fresh earth and torn plants, luxurious odors of night flowers, but over it all, dread, panic. The scent was unmistakable - desperate animals had the same chemo signals as he did when they couldn’t escape. He could see it in Cora’s eyes now, the fear of being caught in a trap, forever.

 

***

 

There was no scent of dinner, only stale, musty air. There were no guests in the hallway either, only distant music. It had a simple pattern and yet in that simplicity, it was sad.

"Derek, I hope you're here. Wherever this is. I could really use you."

The music played on, rarely changing much, but he couldn’t find its source. When he came to the landing at the end of the hall, the music seemed to be coming from the floor below, from behind the wide staircase that led down from the landing to a large entry hall.

The house was lit with candles but still hid itself - walls paneled in ebony black, trimmed almost as dark, as if the house was in mourning. The floors were deep brown, well-polished and covered with thin carpets of deep red, bearing indecipherable patterns. Bloodstained was the word that came to Stiles’ mind. It had a grandeur that Hale House never had in the time Stiles knew it, even in pictures.

He had stopped at the corner of the hall before entering the landing because he could hear something else now, better and worse at the same time – voices. They were indistinct and far-off, like the music, but he guessed there were at least a few more people in the house with him. This whispered conversation did little to relax him. He ventured forward on to the landing, and leaned over the carved wood railing to look the marble entry hall and the vast double doors that stood open to the night.

"Time to explore," he whispered, and set off down the staircase.

Night air blew in the wide double doors, carrying the oil smell of the torches along the front wall. A way out, he thought, but there were people inside, too. The music was louder now, but the voices were farther away and less clear. He left the open door behind to find whoever was responsible for this and demand answers.

The fact that he seemed to be lucid and in charge of his fate buoyed him. But the house was not laid out like any normal house. After nearly five minutes of walking, first through a grand arch into another large room, then down what appeared to be a main corridor, he realized that the music was clearer but the voices were gone entirely.

Several side doors loomed along this hallway, handles long untouched judging by the dust on them. The rest of the house, unlike the entry hall, remained oppressively dark, the high ceilings vanishing into black while the walls and floors competed to eat up the meager candlelight. The music was plaintive now, a call and response of just a few notes, like a lost love, and again he wished Derek was there, and Scott and Lydia, and his father.

The music originated at the end of the hall where a door stood open, unlike the rest that refused to yield as he tried them. When he came to the last room, he looked slowly around the door frame, and then strode into it in disbelief. It was empty, in every way. No musicians, no guests, no furniture even. And yet the same notes pounded out, and that was real. The hair on his neck stood up.

"No, not going to get scared because they have hidden speakers. Halloween at the Fright Farm taught me all the tricks. Could you put something a little livelier on? Huh?" he said to the room, generally.

The rattling breath behind him made him jump and turn; it wasn't just how the man looked, it was how he was slowly emerging from the wall. He was ancient and decrepit, muttering through thin grayish lips what sounded to Stiles like a kind of French.

“ _Escoutaz vietz d'azes, que le mau lubec vous trousque_ —"

Stiles eyed him with horror as he stepped fully free of the wall.

“Euh- _Español?_ English?” the man asked in a heavy accent, his jaundiced eyes focusing upon Stiles for the first time.

He held a hand out to Stiles, who was not inclined to take it, and grunted “Vernand.” With shocking speed, he grabbed Stiles’ hand and with the other hand he took the lapel of Stiles’ thick coat and was just inches away.

“You come back?” the withered man demanded, angry but weak.

“No!” Stiles said quickly, trying to back away from the stench of death and the handful of gray-green teeth that remained in the man’s mouth.

Vernand’s head tilted as his eyes tried to study Stiles, and then he spoke again, a raspy, “I know his story. I knew _him._ You feel like him.”

He seemed to relax and sink back against the wall, as Stiles tried to free himself, but even now this man held tight.

“You love still your wolf-man? Or again you lose him?” He sounded like a nosy relative.

Stiles had no ready answer to either question; both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ clamored to get out but what emerged was “I know some… some wolves.”

“Wise, wise not to admit love, especially of a wolf. I hunted wolves, once,” the man said as he sank back into the wall he’d come from. “After they killed my son,” he added softly. His sunken face twisted with sorrow, but no tears came. “You will hear my story soon enough.”

Stiles realized that the man was not just sinking deeper into the wall; the wall was growing around him, its tendrils growing _into_ him. Stiles tugged himself free but the man held his hand tight, so tight Stiles was afraid they’d bond together and both vanish inside the house.

Vernand could barely whisper now: “Never take a seat at her table. Never lift your knife and eat. Never tell her your stories, _least of all a story of love_.”

The house consumed him, pulling him inside the wall as Stiles ripped his hand free and stumbled back. He was alone again, the room as empty and dim as before, no longer devouring a man who wasn't there. Stiles moved wide around the spot where the man had been and fled.

"Retrace, _retrace.”_ He kept one eye on the door to the room he’d just fled. Door was here, five doors back was the- damn it!” There were only two doors now, no staircase, no clear way back. The path had changed.

With the music silenced, Stiles heard short panicked gulps of air - his own.

“Where the hell am I, and where are you, Derek?” Silence again, except for the hyperventilating. He fought it in his head. “Fuck this, I need a plan. No pen. No paper,” he muttered as he scanned the hallway; his eyes landed on an unlikely tool. “Dusty mirror, you’re up. Step 1. … “

He thought through all the impossible things he wanted. _Graduate. Don’t die first. FBI Internship. Don’t die first. Tell Derek I would like very much to get the hell out of Beacon Hills with him in the Jeep next to me, even if he’s not entirely sure he loves me yet. Don’t die first. Don’t die while saying stupid shit like that to Derek’s face. Don’t get killed by him after I say it anyway. Don’t die._

The voices returned, closer, low and deliberate. He left behind the small mirror with a single “Don’t die” in his rough script. He reversed his course and added “Tell him!” and then glared at the mirror like it was to blame.

 

*******

Through a set of richly decorated, barely ajar doors on his left, he glimpsed a room so sumptuous and full of life it felt unlike any other part of the house. It was grander than any room he'd seen so far, with tapestried walls and enough candles that the shadows lurked only at the edges of the table but were all the darker for it. The table was massive, set for seven; the central seat was larger and raised just slightly. It was deserted.

“You’re disturbing her rest!”

Stiles whirled on a young girl about his age, dressed in period clothes like his own.

“Stop creeping up on me! What is it with you people?”

“A door is still open. She’ll be awake soon and when she awakens, all the doors close.”

This young girl didn’t fade into the wall. She pointed to a nearby hallway that he hadn’t seen just a moment before.

“The way out is that way,” Stiles replied, fairly confident that the direction he pointed to was better.

“Then go your way,” she replied, an angry tone in her voice. “You won’t get out the way you got in. No one ever did.”

“Where am I?” Stiles asked.

“Do wolves ask what a trap is? No, they chew off their own foot to escape! Run!”

Stiles fled from her, but chose the way she was pointing.

“She’ll be awake soon! Hurry!” came her worried voice from behind him as he ran.

Soon enough Stiles could again smell the cool night air filling the hallway, but the voices behind did not fade - the girl and now a man’s voice as well, sounding far too calm for their situation. Stiles emerged through an archway into the same vast entry hall he'd been in before and skidded to a stop. The massive front doors were still open. Stiles ran to the threshold and looked out – still dark, still the same trees lit by torches. There were coach tracks and prints from horses’ hooves but the coach was gone. He hesitated.

“The library!” Stiles said with renewed certainty and sprinted back through the archway that led to the staircase, only it didn’t anymore. He could just make out the dark landing above him where he’d started, now an unreachable balcony.

Worse still, he could see the house _moving_ , never just where he looked but creeping at the edges of his vision, with a _noise_ he hoped to never hear again. The hall he’d just run through twisted shut and reformed itself as a blood-red wall. A section of the new wall seemed to drip away, revealing the portrait of a woman. A distant cousin of the Hales, Stiles imagined, but colder.

He heard the same two voices again, close behind him now, and when he looked, the same double doors stood slightly ajar. He was at the dining room again without even moving, staring at the same ornate handles. There was no other exit left.

“Further in.”

His bravado was nearly gone, his hands shaking as he reached out. He closed his eyes and thought of Scott in class, or at home maybe by now. His father would be worried; he’d be searching the town, again. He imagined Derek, running in some forest, running up to this strange house, but his imagined werewolf was silent, and _angry._

Stiles pushed the doors wide open and stepped inside.

 

* * *

 


	2. The Boy Who Sat Down to Eat Souls

_**The Boy Who Sat Down to Eat Souls  
** _

 

_Who is she?_

Row upon row of candles, horns of creatures unrecognizable, people in lavish costumes - everything distracted his mind, and yet all of it converged, directing Stiles to her, the true center of the room. Her long black hair framed a regal face, yet her dress weighed heavily on her, fold upon fold of cloth the color of dried blood.

She was seated at the midpoint of a long wooden table laid out for a lavish dinner - of which she was clearly the hostess. Her elaborate raised seat only confirmed what her presence had made clear, she was the queen of this place. Her right hand gripped the arm of the chair as if to stay upright, while a goblet tilted in her left hand, forgotten but not released. And yet - she was asleep, and remained so.

Stiles couldn't look away. Everything pulled toward her, like vertigo draws us nearer to the edge, to the drop we secretly long for, and Stiles stepped closer, his mind working to bring sense to his nightmare.

He spoke softly so as not to wake the hostess: “Okay - big dinner party, too much wine - except no one’s started eating, and there’s no food. Or wine. And she’s out cold.”

One man looked up wary and terrified at Stiles’ mumblings, a man who might have been the lady’s companion but was too afraid to look at her. On the lady’s left, his mouth open and sucking in shallow breaths, was the old man Stiles had seen vanish into a wall. He was leaned against the sleeping woman but fighting it, like he was fighting against gravity. His sunken face and vacant eyes flicked rapidly around the room, as if he could sense the attack coming.

"Come in, you," whispered the young girl at the nearer end of the table. She was the same one from the hall, now seated. "She knows you're here," the girl added, sounding both honest and deeply despairing.

Her voice broke the room’s spell and Stiles realized that all the other guests were there. They hadn’t entered as he had, they were just _there_ , materialized from one moment to the next, all six of them. They looked at him, some with disinterest or disbelief, others with intense curiosity. Behind the lady, a portrait of a wolf watched him too.

“Where are we?” Stiles asked, impatient for answers.

No one answered, and their hostess slept on.

The girl who'd spoken to Stiles and the much older woman next to her were pointedly ignoring Vernand’s odd posture and his panic, but the middle-aged man at the lady’s right hand was not. He was terrified.

"You can have my seat," he offered, his voice reedy and thin.

"You are a disgusting coward, de Groulx," hissed the dark-haired woman next to him. She had a round face and a powerful body, but moved stiffly in the clothes she wore.

"Another poor soul crosses paths with the Hales and suffers for it," said the younger man at the far end of the table, and Stiles was instantly alert, staring intently back at a gaze that matched his own.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Stiles said as he strode forward. “You know the Hales?”

“We all did, at this table, one way or another.” His voice was angry but his face revealed pain.

“Well did they put a door on this place?” Stiles demanded. “Because I need to get home. Got a big test today.”

“You can go outside,” the man answered calmly.

“Gideon lies,” said the girl from the far end. “Here we stay and here we die.”

“One of us is lying,” snapped Gideon, “probably that thief.”

"No one here will help you, and that is the truth," said the girl. “And you may call me Raleigh."They gave me no other name.” She said it as plainly as everything else she said.

The only guest who hadn't spoken yet was the elderly woman, a grand and beautiful lady who was calmer than anyone else apart from their sleeping hostess. She cleared her throat graciously and looked at Stiles with gentle eyes.

"We all are, aren't we? Going to die, I mean?" It was calm and complacent and all the more frightening for that, and because of what was happening right next to her.

Vernand, who Stiles was trying not to look at, rocked back and forth faster and faster, slipping into a blur that couldn’t be real. Stiles blinked, but the man was unrecognizable, and… fading away. The traumatized de Groulx, on the Lady’s right, watched this happen, his mouth agape. Between them, the lady stirred and smiled but slumbered on.

"Okay I’m _out_ ,” Stiles said, “but thanks for the invitation to stay and die. If I'm ever back this way…," he trailed off as he caught sight of a door at the far side of the room and backed toward it, hands out to keep the guests away.

Only the old woman watched him now. The others looked to be praying.

“Won’t you stay? We’ll have a seat for you soon,” she asked kindly. “We all have stories to share, and yours, I sense, is quite dark.”

"Sorry, thanks, can't join your little _Addams Family_ re-creation, much as I'd love to,” Stiles protested at the door. “As cosplays go, it is _awesome_ ; you're really nailing it. Trying a little too hard, even. Always put in a little humor to balance out the horror."

With that last critique, Stiles dashed out the door on the far side, slamming it closed behind him.

He could still hear the conversation behind him distinctly, as if he hadn't put any distance or walls between himself and the dinner party.

"Same as always. Bets on how long?" came de Groulx’s voice, the weakest one.

“He reminds me of someone I knew.” It was the old woman who said that and her words sent a shiver down Stiles’ back.

“He reminds me of myself,” said the deep voice of the man at the end.

“We'll be eating soon," in Raleigh’s voice was the last thing Stiles heard clearly as he ran.

"Eating - no. Not me. Not hungry at all,” he muttered, mainly to convince himself as his stomach growled. He raced down a long, dimly lit hall, determined to get out, get back, get home. Soon, the corridor opened out onto the familiar entry hall. The richly, intricately carved doors were closed tight. Black night pressed hard up against the large windows.

When Stiles pulled on the handles, the doors did not budge, and he could find no way to open the windows either.

“Damn it!” he yelled. “Wake up, don’t die, get out.”

 

***

 

The panic morphed into something else in his chest. It didn’t feel like the nogitsune possessing him, not at all.

“Emptiness,” he said quietly. He could feel a hunger growing. "What did Morrell say? Going through hell, keep going?” _What does she know? She never fell into a book._ "Scott, I could really use your help buddy,” he whispered. “Come find me, huh? You too, Dad. Right through this door." He paused and watched the doors. “Right now.” He waited, arms wide. _Not right now, okay, all on my own then._

He ran down a different hallway, trying not to head back toward the table where the lady waited. In less than a minute he was lost in a labyrinth, again, and the panic returned.

The empty hallway grew colder. There was a scream far off down the hall in the same direction he'd been heading, a cry so loud and so full of terror that he shut his eyes and sank back against the wall.

“Derek?" he called out, softly. “I could really use you here. A little fang, a little claw, a lot of muscle….”

The hall seemed to brighten, the air felt warmer, and Stiles mistook this as a sign that Derek was somehow present. He stood up straight and looked down the corridor both ways, plotting.

"Okay, magic house, listen up. Hogwarts has a Room of Requirement, so let’s see what you can do. I need to find the library again. Fast.”

He heard the creak of a door opening and spun around, but the hall was deserted; about twenty feet back a dark doorway loomed.

“It worked,” he whispered. “Nice.”

He steeled himself for whatever might be in there, and went through the door. He was back in the small bedroom he'd been in earlier. The candles still burned, much lower now, and on the seat cushion of the chair, face down, lay a small book.

As he picked it up, a page fell from the front, crumbling to dust in his hand as he caught it. The wishing well story was now followed by a new page, crisp and blank except for an uncannily accurate portrait of his face.

“Where the hell am I? And where are _you_ , Derek?"

 

***

 

> “Don’t tell me you’re going back to save those kids? They were pretty clear about not wanting us. Besides, Scott’s strong enough, and Stiles is smart enough. Spooky smart, as I recall. He could even manipulate Peter.”
> 
> “Stiles found the book. He won’t survive it.”
> 
> “He got in? But the library was-”
> 
> “Hidden by Deaton, protected.”
> 
> “And what sort of book kills people, Derek?”
> 
> Derek couldn’t look at her any more.
> 
> “Our family can’t take any more secrets, Derek. Not from _you_.”
> 
> Derek looked up now, hurt.
> 
> “Stiles took an unreasonable interest in you, you know.” Cora was thinking nearly as fast as Derek was packing to leave. “Especially the story Peter told us, about Paige-”
> 
> “I have to go. Now.” Derek cut her off.
> 
> “There it is - the same shit you pull every time someone hits an emotional nerve. I can _tell_ , Derek. I’m your sister.”
> 
> Derek yanked the suitcase upright in front of him and stared at her, lips tight, daring her to say more.
> 
> “You’re terrified. Some kid you once knew is in trouble and you’re _sweating_? And forgetting to pack your socks…”
> 
> “I’m going.”
> 
> Cora’s face softened from stern analysis into sisterly affection for her big brother.
> 
> “You love him -”
> 
> “He could already be dead,” Derek said, tugging the handle of the suitcase left and right.
> 
> “Go save him, then. Take the company jet, race to his rescue. Just be sure you tell him you came for him. And tell him why.”
> 
> Derek let the bag rest and pulled Cora into a crushing hug.
> 
>  “I love you, little sis,” he whispered. “I always will.
> 
> “Derek- “

 

***

 

“Who is this 'Derek'?” asked a man’s voice behind Stiles.

“He’s just someone I know. He’s a friend,” Stiles said, lifting the book from the bed and turning to conceal his action from Gideon.

“Lies are _my_ specialty in here. So you’d best not try.”

Stiles faced the man, the one from the end of the table, hair pulled back straight back in a ponytail, face set in a frown.

“Gideon? That’s your name?”

“‘Mighty man of valor.’ My mother was quite Biblically influenced. It’s why she ran me off when I showed her what I was capable of.”

“Tell me what you know about the Hales,” Stiles said cautiously.

“I was their emissary.”

“When? 18th century France?”

“Blame de Groulx for these… costumes, and the garish ornamentation. Our hostess took a fancy to them and won’t change. Myself, I was a Union soldier.”

“The Union- the North? The United States?”

“Hardly united. I hear we won, or so Chabela said.”

“Yes,” Stiles said, then thought better. “Yes and no. You’ve been in here since- “

“1862, June 19th, with half an hour left in the day.”

Stiles’ eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“I looked up at the clock just before I opened -”

“-this book,” Stiles finished the thought and raised the book in his hand. “Are we in this?”

Gideon nodded.

“Right now?”

“Another Hale emissary has disregarded the rules. That’s why they pick us, you know. We’re the quickest thinkers, but we can’t resist a challenge. You were a fool to serve that family, just as I was.”

“I’m not. I didn’t,” Stiles protested.

“Not the quickest? Or not a fool?”

“Why do you think I’m an emissary? I mean, I am, clearly,” Stiles corrected.

Gideon examined him carefully.

“Only a powerful druid emissary could even locate the book, let alone open it, and at the same time you are clearly lying when you say you _are_ one….” his voice trailed off as he gave Stiles an odd look.

“Derek makes that face around me sometimes,” Stiles nodded, not sure why he felt proud of that.

“Your ability to deceive is impressive. But any spark we have is limited here. There’s no way to leave and no Hale would sacrifice themselves.”

“I don’t have a spark-” Stiles blurted out but then stopped himself. The conversation was beginning to remind him of conversations with Peter - brutally honest, deeply unsettling, and best avoided.

Stiles tucked the book deep into a pocket inside his coat where it pressed against his chest.

“Were you lying about getting out?” Stiles asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I’ll show you.”

 

***

 

“You can leave, yes. Just not for long,” Gideon explained, letting go of Stiles’ arm so that he slumped to his knees in the dirt. “As you see.”

“What- was that?!” Stiles gasped, looking back at the tree line. The ordeal was over, and for that he was grateful.

“The edge. The spine of our book, perhaps.”

Gideon had taken him out a side door of the house, seized his arm roughly, and dragged him into the trees that grew where the torchlight faded. Branches struck his face, but they gradually fell away, and then all light vanished, then everything but a feeling of terror and dizziness. They emerged from that void near the front of the house. The doors were open again, a wide mouth with glowing windows above it like eyes, six of them.

“All of this is malleable - out here, in there. But it’s hers to shape, our ‘hostess’.”

“What is she?”

“She wants something to live within her. She wants our lives. Some kind of ancient evil.”

“Again??” Stiles asked, annoyed. “We’ve had enough of those in Beacon Hills the past few years.”

“Story after story we tell her, but they aren’t enough,” Gideon continued. “She remembers the first story she ever heard, the one that brought her to life, and nothing else can equal it. Mohy knows what it was - that ancient witch with the powdered wig and the dark heart in her chest? Ask her.”

“Can we kill her?” Stiles asked bluntly. Gideon didn’t answer.

“Vernand knew that story too, but he’ll be a memory soon, now that you’ve arrived.” A look of fear came into Gideon’s eyes.

“The Hostess is awake. Time for a story. Time for dinner.”

He went inside without a further word, as if summoned, leaving Stiles suddenly alone.

***

 

> Derek left Cora with a simple message to pass on to their uncle, and to a very worried sheriff. It said only to “Follow Deaton”. Cora added her own thoughts to Derek’s terseness.
> 
> To Deaton himself, Derek sent a short, simple story only ten words long: “The book is open. Take the Sheriff. Take Peter too.”
> 
> Deaton sank to his knees under the weight of those ten words. He ran through every protective enchantment he could remember, but knew they wouldn’t save Derek. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his heartbeat. _We aren’t ready. We’ve lost too many._
> 
> Peter’s eyes flicked left and right at the city outside his window. There was no trust between him and Deaton, and little left with Cora. If Derek was asking Cora to contact him, something was wrong. If Derek was asking him to trust Deaton, something was _very_ wrong.
> 
> The Sheriff blinked at his phone, unready for this. It had to be about Stiles. “Why does everything that involves Derek Hale end up involving you, too?” His phone screen went dark in response.

***

 

Stiles’ mouth tightened in frustration.

"Fine, I'll come to you, hostess lady. Time to wake up and greet your guests properly."

The house led him to the Hostess and her table in only a few moments. He opened the banquet hall doors again and strode through boldly this time, stopping two feet from the long table and the assembled guests. The skeletal Vernand was gone now; the elderly woman had moved into his chair, closer to the Hostess, yet she maintained her calmness.

The Hostess stirred ever so slowly from her deep sleep and those at the table looked away as she woke. Her eyes focused on the center of the table, a huge empty space that seemed to be awaiting a platter of enormous size, their meal.

Then her gaze swung left toward Stiles, striking him. He stepped back under the force of it, but the door he’d just entered was gone.

The lady was sitting upright now, her face harder and less kind than he'd imagined it just a moment before. She was wide awake and examining him intensely, even as the guests ignored his presence. In a single movement she set her goblet on the table and stood, waving Stiles toward the only open seat, at the end where he stood. Raleigh had taken the older lady's seat, and the now open chair at the end slid back from the table of its own accord.

"We have a new guest joining us,” the Hostess announced to the table.

"Tell me-" Stiles began.

The Hostess turned her gaze directly on Stiles again, and the words died in his mouth. He didn’t want them to die but they did, and he had to muster great strength before he could speak again.

"This …human… has chosen to join us," she said, sliding uncertainly over the word ’human.’ “He is most welcome.” It was the kindest, most heartfelt welcome he’d heard in years, but Stiles refused to let her change his reality.

"I never chose-"

"And we will learn why he chose this soon enough," she cut him off. "You _want_ \- you want so very much, don’t you?" she asked, taking her seat again gracefully and eyeing him with ever-growing curiosity.

“To get out, to go home, yes!" Stiles was able to get out before she shouted “NO!”

The other guests remained silent and unmoving, staring down at the empty table before them as the candles flickered briefly.

A hungry look came over the Hostess and her brows lowered. She leaned forward, her grip on the arms of her chair ever tighter.

“You have such tales to tell us! Tales of loss - a parent, yes? Loyalty - to your absent friends? And Love - I can almost taste it… love without end would be too familiar, but your story… _love without a start_!”

By the end of this outburst, she was giddy with excitement.

"Well, you're creepy, I'll give you that." Stiles replied.

"Stiles," she said in a brittle tone, knowing his name before he’d said it. "You summoned me, not the other way around. _You came to me._ You gave yourself. What is given is never returned, always kept."

“Are you the villain in this story?”

“You are all my _guests_ ,” she said, but it was neither protest nor disagreement.

“Guests can leave,” Stiles said in as threatening a voice as he could muster, anger and fear overcoming good sense.

“Vernand left,” Gideon noted, looking directly at Stiles, while de Groulx’s eyes moved between the two of them and the Hostess; he was ready to snap in half from nerves.

Stiles looked down at Raleigh and she ventured a glance up.

"Weren't there six of you?" Stiles asked, not really wanting to know.  
  
"There are always six of us,” said the old woman next to her, her warm brown eyes on his.

He shivered, thinking about the withered man he’d seen, the man who’d been … _attached_ to the Hostess and then vanished in a blur. He rubbed both hands across his face, immersed in blessed dark for a moment. Derek's warmth was there too - the warm grip of his hand as he stopped Stiles’ fist from striking him again on the floor of the elevator, the warm look when he'd believed Stiles over Ms. Blake in one slow blink of his eyes.

"There it is again,” the Hostess said, tilting her head back, mouth open as if tasting the air. She looked directly at Stiles, as if waiting desperately for a gift, or for food. “You’ll tell us the perfect story of longing, Stiles, just like the one I remember," she added. “Sit now,” she said, gesturing to the newly open seat to her left, the last one.

Stiles resisted. _Never take a seat at her table, the old guy warned me._ He looked for a way to flee even without a single door in sight.

"Skulls? Wolf paintings? Are _you_ a wolf?”

"Something much worse-" the young girl started to say, but the Hostess's goblet struck the table so hard that it left a deep gouge. The blow echoed through the room for a moment.

"You see here a rich banquet, Stiles,” the Hostess said when the cup had stopped ringing. “To my right, deceit, hatred and fear,” and she gestured to the three people in turn.

It was clear from their faces alone that hate was the dark-haired woman, and fear was de Groulx; that left Gideon as the deceiver.

“And on my left, complacency, candor, and…you. You're a new taste, our first in a long while. What will you bring us?”

She studied Stiles intently before smiling hungrily. “You remind me so much of a boy I knew a very long ago. I could have eaten him up."

"She did," mouthed the old woman, as Stiles’ eyes widened.

“Tell me a story, Chabela,” said the Hostess, turning her face toward the dark-haired woman, who went rigid.

“One day I found a real wishing well,” Chabela said reflexively, and then stopped herself.

“The whole story,” insisted the Hostess. “It will be our appetizer.”

“I don’t much like telling this story...” Chabela protested, her hands gripped tightly against her stomach, but avoiding the lady’s gaze.

“Chabela,” said their Hostess, warmly entreating on the surface, but unmistakably a command.

Stiles watched this with a growing sense of fear. Not one person at the table resisted or even seemed capable of it. Chabela, now flushed and nervous, began her story in a soft, shaky voice.

> _“One day, I went walking in the hills and I found a wishing well, only - it was a cursing well…”_

“Make your tale beautiful and rich, like you always do,” implored the Hostess.

Chabela’s lip trembled, but she quickly composed herself. Her voice took on a lilting quality that drew Stiles in. He was no longer at the table, but staring, with Chabela, into the depths of a small stone well on a dry plain.

> _“The little centavos from my pocket tumbled down, six of them -_ six five four _they splashed, carrying my wish down to the water far below. But wishes are not so cheap; they are dear, dear things. We birth them in our hearts, nurse them, embrace them, and so we forget what is real and what is desire.”_

Stiles could see his hand, her hand, dropping the tiny coins one by one; he could smell the cool musty air of the well and the resinous brush of the arid mountains around him.

Chabela paused, her voice tight with sadness, and swallowed before continuing, faster now to get it over, to get out.

  _“I wished for her to be free, my_ loba _._ Three two one _they fell, and when I looked up, a wolf was watching me. I wished her away and instead she came to me, there and then by the edge of the well and her eyes stayed on me, even as she stumbled in and fell…. “_

Her voice cracked as tears streamed down her face. Stiles’ eyes were wet now too.

“Tell us the end,” the Hostess said quietly.

> _“Then I heard it -- o_ _n the coast road, six spins on rain-slicked pavement, five posts shattered…”_

Stiles found himself plunging off a cliff high above the ocean, weightless in the heavy air then down, down, jolting to a stop. He stood waist deep in warm blue water amid the breakers and the wreckage of the car.

> _“…four wheels spinning on the rocks, three waves finally pulling the car into the depths, two lights still somehow blazing, sinking beneath the waves, the one wolf I loved and couldn’t love…”_

Stiles ached for a moment in a black void, sad beyond any words, then the room reformed around him.

“So sweeeeet,” whispered the Hostess, drawing the word out. Tears fell on her dress, turning it from red to black as they splashed.

“That wasn’t sweet at all,” Stiles whispered, his own eyes spilling over with tears.

“Sweet and bitter, love desired and love denied, her favorite kind of story,” Raleigh said petulantly. “Unless _you_ have a worse love story….”

“I might…”

Stiles was thinking of Derek and trying very hard not to, yet Derek was there again, clear in his mind, pissing him off one minute, protective the next, all snarling fangs with the outside world but gentle with him, and then dying on a rock in Mexico, telling him to save Scott, and _just_ as he was alive again, he vanished.

_We said everything in that last look, but then I left you to die. I’m such an idiot._

“Later, Stiles. Keep your tears for later,” said the Hostess. “We shall tell more stories soon. Then you will tell us your story and it will be _magnificent_.”

The dead man’s words echoed in Stiles’ head: _Never tell her your stories._

“Now we eat! said the Hostess and she rose again with renewed energy.

Large double doors flew open in the wall directly across from her and a pair of servants entered, laboring to carry a gigantic serving platter. The platter and the large cloche over it fit perfectly in the empty space on the table.

"Wha- what's that-?" Stiles asked nervously as they set it heavily on the table before the Hostess.

Just like the Hostess, the eyes of the guests were hungry now, and they flashed like werewolves' eyes. The three on the far side of the table were transforming already.

The servants pulled off the cover to reveal an ancient, haggard wolf, still in its death throes, still warm.

 

***

 

“A wolf, just for you, Stiles,” the hostess said when she saw his shock easing. “With his story we will remember him.”

As she spoke, Stiles saw again a different room around him, small and simple and murderously cold. A wind howled outside, or a hundred wolves, he couldn’t tell.

 

Gideon had the cadence of a master storyteller and even performed the different voices.

> “ _Night, and wind. The house sealed tight against both, dinner on the table and the warm meal_ _beginning. Hoofbeats, made louder by the night, carried closer by the wind. Nothing will keep them away._
> 
> _“Closer now, down the hill, louder across the river bridge. The horse stops at our door,”_ he concluded, then the story passed to Chabela.

 

Chabela spoke as the men in the scene talked, her words in their mouths, and the wind howled around them. 

> _“A message from the King. It must be carried on to the next town, and the next!”_
> 
> _“Why now? Eat!” says my father._
> 
> _“Before the dawn - news of the King’s wedding must reach the edges of his realm before the sun.”_

 

> _“Night dispatch!”_ shouted de Groulx, continuing the story very much in character.
> 
> _“Now, this night, the next village, go!” the soldier commands._
> 
> _Father asks, “Does he have to? My only son?”_

Stiles stood silently watching a familiar family scene unfold. He recognized the father as Vernand.

 

The elderly woman’s voice felt as icy as the room; the chill sank deeper into Stiles.

> _“You agreed. The son of the local law in our land, being now of age_ -”
> 
> _“To Frahan?” my father pleads. “Frahan lies in a sea of fog and wolves,” Father argues._

 

Raleigh told the last part of the story. 

> _“Of course, I go. I ride with the king’s news._
> 
> _The news does not make it._
> 
> _I met a wolf in Frahan._
> 
> _I swear he spoke, this wolf._
> 
> _He told me to turn and run, this wolf. Too late.”_

 

The scene faded out and Stiles’ eyes snapped open. The Hostess’s body writhed as if she was trying to stay within a pleasant dream. He was at the table again, and so very hungry now.

“That hunter was the old man. I met him,” Stiles said.

“A story of betrayal, and another life lost to wolves,” said Gideon.

“We will not tell it again,” said the Hostess in a solemn voice.

The guests themselves were now five werewolves, their mouths filling with fangs; they tore into the dying wolf’s flesh and blood poured out. The wolf twitched once, but made no sound.

“It’s not dead?!” Stiles yelled, stumbling backward.

“Sit!” hissed Raleigh and motioned Stiles down toward the empty chair.

"Eat!" cried the Hostess joyfully. She joined them in ripping off strips of flesh with her teeth and swallowing them whole.  
  
Stiles backed away, sickened by this gruesome display, unwilling to participate.

The three on the other side were hacking at the creature with their claws. The old woman and the girl nearest him had broken open the skull to get at the brain. The Hostess tore it away from them and pushed it greedily into her own mouth, then turned on Stiles.  
  
"EAT!" she roared, her eyes flashing red as bits of brain scattered from her mouth.

The young girl, nearly transformed, slid a knife into Stiles' fist.

"This helps," she said, as tears ran down her furred face, mixing with the blood on her muzzle.

 

***

 

Intense hunger grew inside Stiles as he stared down at the sharpened blade in his hand, inhaling deeply the smell of blood filling the room. _Never lift a knife… never -? What did the old man say?_ The idea faded from his mind along with his concerns.

He stabbed into the body of the wolf, now dead and motionless. With one hand, he took hold of a muscle and cut it free. He wanted to taste it, to feel that hunger subside. He brought it up to his mouth and was ready to bite into it when he saw the platter no longer held a wolf, but the ravaged corpse of a withered old man like Vernand. _Exactly like Vernand._

Stiles turned away in shock, ready to vomit, but the still-warm muscle hung impaled on tip of his knife. He could taste the red haze that filled the room now. He brought the knife slowly back up to his mouth.

Far down the corridor, through windows and walls, a wolf howled. Everyone heard the howl of pain and sorrow. Stiles turned slowly to listen. He’d felt it before, that aching sadness.

A powerful blow struck the house, followed by another. The entire structure shuddered from bottom to top. A roar like none Stiles had ever heard echoed through the halls. Everyone froze, even the Hostess. The double doors with their ornate handles reappeared as the roar echoed.

There were footfalls outside, then a pause. A short, impatient and very loud rap shook the doors, then they swung open.

The Hostess, outwardly calm, wiped a line of blood from her chin in a quick, angry motion. Stiles copied her movement, cleaning the blood from his face with his cuff.

A tall dark man with a close-cropped beard and striking features entered, dressed in a frock coat of lustrous black, trimmed with silver buttons. His waistcoat was a warm gray-green like his eyes.

 “We have a new guest,” she said politely but with none of the pleasure she’d shown Stiles. She took him in quickly, both his nature and his intent, with great curiosity.

Those same green eyes fell on Stiles instantly, as though nothing else in the room mattered and they flared with a ring of blue. Stiles’ eyebrows popped up and he gasped but still he held his knife firmly in hand, the strip of flesh still at his mouth.

“Who’s he?” Stiles whispered.

 ***

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


	3. The Boy Who Came Running

_**The Boy Who Came Running** _

 

 

“Wolf-man,” said the Hostess. Her voice was icy.

 The man in front of Stiles seemed not at all wolf-like to him. He seemed to know the Hostess, or at least not be as surprised by her as Stiles had been.

"I humbly ask to speak to one of - to this man at the end," he said with old-fashioned formality.

"After we’ve eaten, surely," said the Hostess; it was command, not invitation.

"Forgive me, but the hour is late and I have news he must hear."

“He seems nice,” Stiles said mainly to himself and as quietly as he could. “Familiar.”

The man abruptly gestured at Stiles to shut his mouth.

Stiles’ eyes narrowed but he continued, “From Beacon-”

Stiles got the first syllables out, but the wolf-man’s eyebrows rose with such fury that Stiles choked into silence. After that brief exchange, the angry man ignored Stiles for a moment.

"You may speak to him," the Hostess said, her own eyes glowing red, "after he eats."

"Beg pardon, Lady, but he is family," the man replied, polite but losing patience.

He tugged Stiles away from the table as the other guests returned to their feast, devouring the remaining carcass.

Stiles could see this new guest, too, was transforming; he seemed unable to stop it. His clawed hand now gripped Stiles’ wrist tightly, painfully.

“Come on!” He yanked on Stiles arm, and jerked his head vigorously.

“Oh!” Stiles said, catching the hint.

The doors closed before them, but the wolf-man struck them with his clawed hands, shattering them, then grabbing Stiles’ arm again. They fled.

***

“Oh my god! Let go!” Stiles yelled after he’d been flung hard around a couple of sharp turns.

In an empty hallway, Derek pushed him against the wall and moved in close to look into Stiles' eyes for a very long time, curiosity and care and fear all at once.

“You’re in danger, you little-. Tell me you didn’t eat,” the wolf-man said finally.

“Who the hell are you?”

“ _You_ are Stiles Stilinski…” the man replied, handsome features reforming.

It was an odd name, but it made sense and woke Stiles from the grip of hunger.

"Derek?”

"You know me now?” Relief washed over his face for only a moment, and a hint of a smile.

“Even in this dream you’re rough with me! Up against the wall again. Okay that came out _way_ different than it sounded in my head, but Is there any point where you just sit me down and we have a nice chat, you know ‘How was school, Stiles? Is your Dad doing well?’”

“So you’re fine,” Derek commented, the smile gone.

“I think I ate someone.”

Derek’s expression returned to somewhere between shock and exasperation.

“A _whole_ someone? That … was a person?”

“No, like a little bite, you idiot. I don’t know if I swallowed it or…” Stiles was fully distracted by the ghastly meal now. “I don’t think I swallowed, but I taste blood.” He started to retch. “And I was calling you … and you came … for me,” he got out between heaves, still managing to sound triumphant.

He started to embrace Derek and stopped himself awkwardly after one pat - Derek responded by throwing both arms around Stiles and burying his face in Stiles’ neck, there in the candlelight.  
  
“Yo! This- … Derek- can’t breathe! What a way to die though,” Stiles choked. “God you smell good,” slipped out before he could stop it.

“For once just shut up,” Derek whispered in Stiles’ ear. Stiles’ familiar, complex scent was rich in his nose, dulling his responses to the danger around them. He untangled himself slowly from Stiles’ arms.

“That’s good, Der - that was more of a hug than anyone except Cora ever got. Is this all part of the new wolfy you?”

“Stiles, listen -”

“And I’ve been calling out for hours, by the way. Or days, whatever time it is. What took you so long?”

“The book has an alarm - a … sort of spell. The book called me,” Derek corrected him as matter-of-fact as he could with Stiles still filling his senses.

“So… not because of me?” Stiles asked, crushed but wrapping it in willful disbelief.

Derek’s face showed every frustration, but it softened immediately into open honesty.

“I knew it had to be you,” he said quietly, his eyes dropping down to where he’d taken Stiles’ hands in his without even realizing.

“Of course you did, I mean, who else would be hanging around Hale House picking locks and reading your secret books?”

Stiles’ obvious pride overcame any offense Derek could have taken.

“No one else is so consistently terrifying in their ability to disrupt our family,” Derek replied.

Howls erupted from the room they’d left not nearly far enough behind.

“And while I think that one over,” Stiles continued, “because I’m fairly sure you meant it as a compliment, let’s go. The Hostess will be after us.”

“Who?” Derek asked. “That thing in the red dress?”

“You- you don’t know?” Stiles stopped running to turn and gape at Derek. “You don’t know!”

“I’ve never been here before, Stiles.”

“Where are we? Where is HERE, Derek?”

“In the book,” he answered directly.

“In the book,” Stiles deadpanned.

Derek nodded, not blinking.

“IN. THE. BOOK.”

“Yelling won’t get you out -”

“So, I got in with my amazing perceptive skills, or just dumb luck? And you?”

Derek folded his arms across his chest and asked, “How did you find our library?”

“I just went up the stairs, turned right, … I, I mean it was dark, so I reached out with my hand and felt the door.”

Derek looked at him even more intensely now.

“Dude. What?”

“I wish, … I just wish things were different. We need to find that door again. Whatever you did before, do it again, and I’ll try to help. Reach out.”

“I can’t find it,” Stiles said, starting to get nervous. “I’ve been trying all night.”

“It’s invisible. Something in you made it appear; _you_ unlocked it, Stiles.”

“IN me?”

“Deaton taught me how to open the door; only he and I could do it.”

“I didn’t use words, I just - reached out and my fingers tingled, and – oh my god, am I-? Gideon thought I was an emissary.”

“We have to get you out of here,” Derek said, unfazed. “Deaton can explain it all later. He’ll train you.”

“You just breezed right past that one. I can do MAGIC? Like Deaton, and Ms. Blake?”

“Not like her. I hope.”

“No, I don’t mean - sorry.”

“We can find the door again if we reach out together,” Derek said.

At the end of the hall, Stiles could see the house shifting and changing. The Lady appeared, moving toward them, blood congealing on her hands.

“Run, Stiles!”

“ _We_ run.”

“RUN.” Derek pushed him away. “She won’t hurt me.”

“She EATS people!”

“Stiles.” He was firm. “Trust, and run.”

He realized he had no idea where to go, so he took a dark hall that slanted upward, feeling his way when the light from the hall behind him grew dim. Stiles looked back twice at Derek, feeling a familiar twinge of fear for Derek’s imminent death, one he’d felt in Mexico not that long ago. He could hear the Hostess speaking in sweet tones, then Derek’s deep voice, then her voice turned cold and angry. He stopped and headed back, but the way back led upward now as well, and Derek’s voice was gone.

“Feel it, he says. Right. What is this, the Force?” he asked, and suddenly he considered how he might be a Jedi after all. “I need to find the library,” he said tentatively. _Where are you, damn it?_

He stretched his hand along the wall and stepped slowly forward into total darkness.

 

***

 

“Mr. Hale, I should have known you instantly,” the Hostess said, wiping the last of the blood from her hands; it vanished into the dark red of her dress.

“He’s leaving,” Derek stated.

“Is he?”

“I know the rules.”

“Are there rules?” she asked. ‘Tell me a good story’ is the rule I follow.”

“No one comes in, unless they’re a Hale wolf,” Derek said, just as he’d been taught.

“Every guest is here because they are dark inside, because they wanted something they could never have, and because they got too close to your trap. Not a drop of Hale blood in them,” she said, anticipating his next move. “But _Stiles_ , dark and desperate and still he’s something entirely different, so much inside him still untold.”

Derek had no words. His mind raced with memories of Stiles. Every story involving Stiles ended with the same questions - Who _is he_? _What_ is he? Peter had asked it, Cora had too.

“He reminds me of a boy from long ago,” the lady mused, “he told me the most fascinating story of love thwarted. Love for a Hale wolf, in fact.”

Derek tried to look away from her eyes but couldn’t. She came closer still and he could feel hunger growing in him.

“Is Stiles in love with you? Or you with him? Tell me-” she said sweetly, running her fingers down along the veins in his neck.

“He gets out. I stay,” Derek said weakly as he slumped back against the wall under her touch.

“Oh, he won’t like that,” she said. In front of him, she shifted into a snarling wolf, huge and dark, and ran off in the direction Stiles had taken.

 

***

 

“Stiles.” The voice came from all around him in the darkness, a woman not the Hostess.

“Who are you?” he whispered. _I need light. I need to see_.

“Step in. Close the door,” came the voice of the old woman.

As he spoke, the faintest glow had lit up the edges of a door frame on his right, enough to see the door ajar. Stiles slipped in, closing the door behind him. The glow shifted as he extended his hands, now tracing the old woman in purplish light. She had her eyes fixed on his, even in the dark.

“Dinner’s over? Time for dessert?” Stiles said, angry, afraid.

“Show some respect. Has that much changed in five centuries?” she snapped.

“You were… feeding. You were a wolf. You ripped the lungs out of - whatever Vernand was.”

“It’s been a long time since last we ate. You’re just as much a party to it; your arrival was the occasion for the dinner.”

“I didn’t eat.”

“You tasted - I see the blood still stains your garments,” she said ominously. “Let’s look closer.”

With a flick of her hand, a table lamp flared to life, making Stiles wince. She was standing there not three feet from him, lacking the Hostess’ power but grand and full of life despite her age.

Stiles stood his ground now, tired of backing away.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Marie Mohy, and I have a story to tell you. But first, I want your wolf out, gone!” she demanded. One in, one out; as long as he’s here, one of us will be next.”

“Is it you?” Stiles asked rudely.

She sneered but ignored the question, tilting her head to study him more closely in the lamplight.

“I see him in you, in the turn of your nose, just there at the tip. The same boy who loved his wolf.

It’s no coincidence that you stumble in here and he comes running after. He had a spark in him, just like you. Wolves can’t stay away from it.”

Stiles stared at her, uncomprehending.

“The boys who started this nightmare tale had the same senseless, self-centered love. They pulled an entire town into her grasp.”

“I’m human,” Stiles insisted, despite his earlier excitement.

“Gideon had a different name for you,” Marie noted, sitting forward in the chair, alert and curious.

“How do you know -?”

“Because I was _listening_ , you dolt. If you’re going to use your gift fully, you must _listen to it_.”

“You’re … supernatural?” Stiles asked.

“You’re getting better at questions.”

“You remind me of a darach we killed,” Stiles said, stepping back a bit now.

“And you remind me of the yako, the dark foxes. Now why would that be?”

Stiles’ eyes flicked into the shadows of the ceiling; darkness lunged in at the two of them each time the lamp flickered.

“That’s gone now.”

“It’s never _all_ gone. More importantly, what attracted it continues to grow stronger every day.”

“I’m -”

“Human, yes, so am I,” she said, growing impatient. “It’s entirely possible to be both - two sides of the coin, as they say; a different color in a different light.”

She gestured toward the lamp again and it responded, getting brighter, whiter. She aged in that moment, decades, her face disfiguring.

“Despite what you believe, Stiles, we both have power. Help me and I can help you. I want him gone, your hulking, lovelorn wolf. The Hostess can’t have both of you in your current state of infatuation.”

“Derek and I aren’t - he’s not ‘lovelorn’. We don’t have a relationship, let alone a - even our friendship is sketchy. I just -”

“Have you _asked him_?”

 

***

 

Derek tried to follow the great wolf, but the house thwarted him at every opportunity, shifting and reforming to force him deeper inward - soon, he was at the broken entry doors of the banquet hall again, now deserted but for one man. Derek studied him silently. He could smell fear and little else radiating from the man as he sat immobile in the third chair, looking at the blood-drenched table. His own face and neck were covered with dark red streaks, dull and dried.

“You’re a Hale,” said the man, calm despite what Derek sensed.

“How did-?”

“The family resemblance is striking. Also, I was a spy, a good one. De Groulx.” He offered his name but not his hand, looking warily at Derek. “That’s the story she wants to hear, a gripping tale of espionage, revolutionary fervor, betrayal. She doesn’t like the part where I criticize your family’s politics. Says it bores her.”

“You knew my family?” Derek asked, curious.

“In 1794, in France, yes. I spent a year getting close to the de Halys family of Lyon. We in the Comité for Public Safety suspected they were secretly allied with the aristocracy, given their wealth and name. My other employers were hunters, more concerned that you were _loups-garous._ ”

“You opened the book.”

“I opened your book, indeed. I read it. I closed it. Nothing happened at first. I thought it an oddly brief little volume and wondered why it was hidden so well that only a trained spy could find it, so I went back to examine it again for codes. It was… waiting for me…” His voice trailed off briefly. “This is before you told your magicians and wizards to hide it.”

“Emissaries,” Derek corrected.

“Your word. They’re evil things, no better than demons. The Argents should have killed _them_ and left you wolves to your own fate.”  
  
Derek’s back stiffened at that name.

“We stopped the monster,” Derek argued, repeating what Talia had told him. “We didn’t create her."

“So many people are no longer here to dispute your version of events, thus I must,” de Groulx replied, offended. “Your family was a part of creating her and _as you see_ , she’s never stopped feeding on us. This Hell you protect is full of people you couldn’t. It has now devoured you and that is justice.”

“My mother didn’t tell me there were other souls in here,” Derek stammered, shaken.

“I hope she isn’t missing you right now. You won’t ever be going back.”

“I knew that when I came in,” Derek said, finding confidence in his mission again. “But I will get one of you out.”

De Groulx’s eyes locked with Derek’s, and for a second, he hoped.

 

***

> _The Stilinski kitchen_
> 
> “Do you know where my son is?” was the Sheriff’s first question.
> 
>  Deaton could only reply, “Unfortunately, I do.”
> 
> “Damn it.”
> 
> “There’s a way to save him. We think…,” Deaton said cautiously. “I can’t guarantee he’ll be all right, or even himself, if we get him out.”
> 
> “Out of where?” the Sheriff asked. “Is he trapped? In Hale House?
> 
> “In a way, yes.”
> 
> “No, you don’t get to do that, not now. I have a gun and ten men and women ready to go in. Do _not_ play games with me. Derek said to follow you, and that bought you time to talk, so talk.”
> 
> “The Hales have a book,” Deaton tried to explain in simple terms. “It’s cursed.”  
>    
>  “Of course it is.”
> 
> “Stiles found it.”
> 
> The Sheriff just nodded at this point, rubbing his eyes.
> 
> “Is my son alive?” he asked, pain rushing out through every word.
> 
> Deaton couldn’t answer, but he had to.
> 
> “I believe so, but- “
> 
> “Then why are we still here? Hale House, right? Find him, save him.”
> 
> “ _We_ can’t.”
> 
> “Peter. Cora said Peter was- “
> 
> “Derek’s trying to rescue him right now; he’s the only one who can.”
> 
> “Derek’s back?” the Sheriff asked.
> 
> “He is,” said a deep voice from near the back door.
> 
> “Peter?! Do you knock?” the Sheriff asked.
> 
> “And already he’s sacrificing himself for Stiles,” Peter answered.
> 
> “It’s what Hales do,” Deaton said pointedly, “the ones I’ve served.”
> 
> “Why would he save Stiles? They’re barely friends….” the Sheriff asked.
> 
> “You son can better explain that….” Deaton said uncomfortably.
> 
> Peter had a sly grin on his face but said nothing.

 

***

 

The growl of a wolf rumbled along the hallway outside the small room.

“She’s here,” Marie whispered. “She’s come for us.”

“I’ve had enough of this place,” Stiles said, turning back to fling open the door, no matter what he let in.

A wolf black as night filled the space.

“Oh my god!” he whispered as he flinched back, then found his courage again.

The wolf padded by, ignoring him, heading straight for the old woman. She sat motionless but unwilling to show the full extent of her fear, even as it growled again, louder, teeth ready to bite.

“Derek?!” Stiles burst out, sounding happy and relieved.

The wolf turned its head toward him, eyes blazing blue.

“Wow you look so much better like this than I ever imagined!”

Derek rose from the floor in a transformation Stiles could not _ever_ forget, his fur returning to the sleek darkness of a French nobleman’s coat.

“And the pants too…,” Stiles muttered. “I gotta say, that was - in _credible_ ” and here he leaned closer, “Scott also told me you were naked when you kicked Kate’s ass.”

“It’s this place -” Derek tried to explain, the slightest hint of a warm flush across his face. “And she’s a darach,” Derek said, desperate to change the subject.

“Oh, I know. She seems to think I am too.”  
  
“You could be a great one,” Marie added.

“No!” said Derek and Stiles simultaneously.

“Let’s go, before this ‘Hostess’ finds us,” Derek added.

“No, you know what, Derek, let’s talk,” Stiles insisted.

“Not the time -”  
  
“You barely talked to me when you were in Beacon Hills. You don’t say more than a simple goodbye and then ‘Poof!’ you vanish,” Stiles complained, making a grand “poof” with his long fingers. “You definitely don’t talk to me when you’re running all over Mexico -”

“Colombia-” Derek interjected, but Stiles was on a roll.

“Then you come here, wherever the hell _here_ is, inside some cursed book from your family’s secret stash - _which I found_ , so not very secret, and you still won’t talk to me?!”

“Ask him,” Marie interjected.

“Getting there,” Stiles waved her off.

“Stiles, I can get you out.”

“Why? Why come for me?”

“Because you’re important. Your dad needs you.”

“Yeah, that’s true, he’d be lost without me,” Stiles admitted, picturing his father, but he looked right back to Derek. “And?”

“Scott needs you. Beacon Hills needs you.” Derek stopped there, hoping it was enough.

“And -” Marie added.  
  
“Shut up!” Derek said firmly to her, not looking away from Stiles.

“Go on, Derek,” Stiles asked softly. “Ignore her, ignore this fucking house. Just you and me,” he said, stepping closer till only a few inches separated them.

“Stiles…” He stalled, wondering at the fascinating, annoying kid in front of him. “I’m doing this for you. I need _you_ , somehow.” _I’m holding his hands again, what am I doing?_ “I need you to be alive, not in here.”

“So, we’ll find our way out of this,” Stiles said, confused and trembling even as Derek’s warm hands held his tightly.

“Yes,” Derek whispered. _I wish I could come with you, figure this out - figure you out. _

He pulled Stiles into a kiss that caught Stiles fully off guard. This wildly exceeded the kisses Stiles had played out in his head for the past couple of years. Stiles’ lips tingled under Derek’s, and the feeling spread through his entire body, out to his fingertips.

They separated, slower than before, as if they’d become entangled in each other’s space. Stiles kept his face close though, feeling Derek’s breath on his jaw, Derek’s lashes on his cheek. The tingling subsided, but only a little.

“We waited too long, why did we wait?” was the first thought he could put together, and Derek’s nod brought them back together for a longer kiss.

Stiles hands were all pins and needles, intruding on the moment.

“Derek, what’s happening -” He stepped back, pulling his hands into the shadow between their bodies.

“Glowing?” Derek asked, but the aura faded quickly.

Three sharp knocks, then two loud ones shook the door.

“No, no NO!” Marie gasped as she fought to stand up.

“Dinner, sir. Our hostess is expecting us."

“She’s hungry already,” Marie cried. “Help me!” It was muffled like Vernand’s cries had been. The chair itself was engulfing her, just as the wall had infiltrated Vernand and swallowed him. Derek watched it happen with horror, while Stiles reached out and seized her bony arms.

“Look at me, Mohy. Fight it!” Stiles insisted.

He struggled to pull her frail body up from the seat but it was like lifting a heavy stone.

“Derek, a little help here -”

Derek wrapped his arms around Stiles’ waist and pulled but nothing changed, and Marie sank deeper as the tendrils invaded her.

“Let her go before it pulls you in too,” Derek said, yanking Stiles’ hand away from the approaching tendrils. Stiles felt the odd sensation return, like something trying to flow out of his fingers, vibrating the bones themselves.

“God it hurts!” Marie cried.  
  
“Let go of her,” Derek insisted.  
  
“No, stay with me, I can save her,” Stiles said confidently, dragging Marie with both hands now, up and free of the chair while Derek braced him. The glow around his fingertips was unmistakable now.

“Marie- you still with us?” Stiles asked.

She looked even older now, wrinkled and small, lost amid the finery of her dress.

“You fools,” she muttered, tottering to her feet, unsteady but still able to glare at them both.

“We just saved you,” Derek protested.

“But you can’t save yourselves, not now; I was wrong about the wolf-man leaving,” she said, sounding worried. “This is the lady’s favorite story - the original story, the boy and his wolf too stupid to know what they’re doing.”

 

*** 

> _Hale House_
> 
> “The library is gone. It burned. I remember that well,” Peter added, leaning into Deaton’s space.
> 
> “It isn’t,” Deaton replied. “But Derek is.”
> 
> “Where exactly in this ruin _is_ Stiles?” the Sheriff asked.
> 
> “In the book,” Deaton said quietly to Peter, gaining his full attention.
> 
> “Family legends. Talia told Derek stories and he believed- “
> 
> “Stiles opened it,” Deaton added.
> 
> Peter’s mouth stayed open only a second longer, in shock, then, “That I believe.”
> 
> “What? No, you said Derek was going to save him!” the Sheriff insisted.
> 
> “Derek will save him _if he can_ ,” Deaton answered.
> 
> “IF?”
> 
> “In any case, we have to seal the book soon,” Deaton continued. “If that kind of evil gets out- “
> 
> “EXCUSE ME?” the Sheriff continued.
> 
> “We get them out, then you give me the book. I can keep it safe,” Peter offered, watching the Sheriff nod, seeing he’d won this fight already.
> 
> “Talia gave that task to her children,” Deaton said.
> 
> “Where is this library? Where is my son?”
> 
> “Yes,” Peter asked, “where _is_ the library?”
> 
> Deaton turned, concealing the gesture he made with his hand and the words he mouthed, concentrating. The door appeared on the blank wall in front of Deaton, and both the Sheriff and Peter stepped back in awe before immediately barging forward.
> 
> “Stop,” was all Deaton said, but it worked. “Look for a small book. Do not touch it.”
> 
>  Peter muscled past them both into the small room.

 

***

 

Marie’s voice was faded and weak, and she slowly slid to the floor as her knees gave out. Stiles and Derek lowered her carefully to a sitting position and knelt in front of her.

Stiles thought for a second, then- “Marie, what’s your story? How did you get here?”

“We don’t have time for this -” Derek insisted.

“Derek, what do I do really well?” Stiles interrupted, cocky again.

“Annoy me. Cause trouble. Disobey rules. Break things. Steal. Interrupt-”

“Okay, okay! Different angle - what do I do that you admire?”

Derek was silent, for a millisecond too long.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re clever,” he offered. “Things no one else can see, you see.” It was Derek’s serious voice, but rich with admiration.  
  
“Saved your life before, I’d wager,” Marie said.

“More than once,” Derek answered her.

“And he saved mine,” Stiles replied.

“I lost count,” Derek said, his eyes on Stiles’ mouth, still not able to make eye contact.

“Well, who’s keeping score? Five?” Stiles said, softer.

“You’re both doomed,” Marie moaned.

"Tell me why you keep _saying_ that. Please,” Stiles pleaded.

“Then listen well…”

 

***

 

> _It was_ _a full-moon summer night. The town before me was as unwelcoming as the rest, but the true danger lay nearby, deep in the ground, waiting._

Stiles and Derek were keeping Marie from collapsing. His thigh was pressed against Derek’s now and he tried to concentrate, but they slipped wholly inside the story the moment she spoke - into the heavy summer air, rich with layers of leaves underfoot and not a hint of a breeze; a silver-lit river snaked around a village below them in the deep valley, but they stood at the edge of a forest of innumerable trees. A wolf howled far off to their left, then laughter.

> _Down through the moss-covered branches, far below the great owl on his branch, the night forest lit up with laughter brighter than the moon above. The tree trunk shivered as the wolf-man backed up against it, making the owl’s talons grip tight. The thin tree shook again, a bit more, when the human slammed up against the werewolf; the owl dug deeper into the branch, holding steady. There was a long silence, in which the forest returned to its nightly affairs, but that was soon enough broken by a kiss, gasps, and more laughter. The wolf-man changed his form to sleek black fur and golden eyes, but the human chasing him wasn't in the least afraid. The two figures below ran deeper into the woods away from the owl, the werewolf faster, the man close behind him; the man complained in the loudest of whispers that this was an unequal and unfair circumstance._

The world flickered, then returned, dimmer.

> _Two weeks later, the owl cocked his head and watched the scene repeat. Dark shapes zigzagged through the maze of close packed, ramrod-straight trees. The half moon rising over the valley cast angled shadows across the pair - now black, now silver-grey, now black again. The human knew he was safe here, safe from the parents who took him in years earlier as a swaddled infant but were close to throwing him back out into the world, fearing what he brought into their town. The wolf felt safe here too – no hunters had come to his forest in years. His sisters could smell the human on him each night, but they said nothing of it, preferring to smirk and laugh behind their hands at him._

Again, the barest flicker, then only starlight. 

> _Another fortnight and the trees of the forest were silent and black under the glittering stars; the owl swooped just as silently down on a rat, snatched it from the floor of the forest and shook it until it hung lifeless in its beak. The village was not far, and there would be more mice and rats than one owl could hope for. For now, it settled by a log and swallowed the rat headfirst._
> 
> _The owl didn't even sense its death. Its neck snapped in the woman's grip, a soft click in the silence. She had need of an owl, and a rat. It was an old spell - a complex one, and dark. Just two more items and she could make their wish come true, the werewolf and his man, for better or for worse, but for good money.  
>  _
> 
> _Wishes (and witches) are tricky, by their very nature; granting a wish that a wolf and a human shared could only add to her power and renown. And to her purse, for this Hale son would pay lavishly for what he wanted. The man beside him, all large eyes and ready laugh against the somber and serious wolf, he would pay too, with desire. All new lovers radiated longing and hope - a powerful energy and a dream-state where everything was possible and everything was necessary._
> 
> _On that darkest night, they came to her in her hole in the rock, slipping below ground, the wolf and the human.  
>  _

Marie’s voice was hoarse now, and above their heads firelight danced. 

> _They swore their love and their longing over her flame, and swore against their families for denying that love. They cut deep to give her their warm blood as bond, and they pledged life and limb for they knew too little of magic and love. They were not afraid as she was, for the first time in her long memory. It was stirring, finding its way into this world, cracking open the rock below_ _them,_ _closer each second. Something they had invited without knowing, something with a powerful hunger poured from that wound, darkness that touched everyone around, desperate to feed._

They could see darkness against the witch’s candle, swallowing the two men, then the witch as she fled, taking them into its grasp. After a moment, the figures calmed and stood still and they were in the small, lamplit room again, frozen in place like the tableau they’d just seen.

“That night the ground shook and people began to disappear, first in the forest, then from the houses nearest the forest. When I went to help the witch, no one else would come with me, and so I encountered our Hostess, in a far different form then - a great emptiness and nothing else, far more powerful than anything I’d ever fought. I used what I knew from lore, even the darkest ways, but…”

“I thought you were the witch?” Stiles interrupted.

“’Witch’ is what some hurled at me in Lublin when they drove me out, but I was not burnt to death as so many were. I delivered babies for women who- who couldn’t be seen having a baby. I made sure the babies survived, sending them far away. When I came to Frahan, my name was too long and too foreign; it snarled their tongues. I gave that name up and become Marie Mohy, midwife for a meager fee.

“The Hale wolf?” Derek asked, certain he could guess the answer.

“And the boy who loved him?” Stiles asked, staring at Derek so intensely that Derek couldn’t break that gaze.

“The witch in the story is long gone, and the boys too. Half the village disappeared; not all to her but many, until a group gathered to seal us - all of us - inside their spell. A spell of words and wood, and at its heart a monster of bottomless hunger for tales of all kinds. But the book didn’t stay closed.”

“The boys fought her, at every turn, but their love didn’t last more than a century. She wanted their story to remain as she remembered it, the original version that had called to her, but everything changed. The boys forgot their story; they gave up on each other. She ate them too in the end, to prevent any revisions.”

“This is bad,” Stiles agreed.  
  
“Stiles - explain,” Derek asked, as patiently as he could.

“If we stay, she wins; we live out our lives, our story, over and over, in here.”

“Then I get you out.”

“If you get us out, everyone else dies - Civil War guy, Car Crash girl, Marie - and the rest.”

“Wolf-man? He’s not listening. He needs to understand just how far your heart will go,” Marie said, looking to Derek.

“Derek?” Stiles asked, confused, his own heart sinking.

Derek looked at her then at Stiles but said nothing beyond “I know what I’m doing. I can get you out…”

“ _Listen_ to him, Stiles,” Marie said.

Stiles replayed Derek’s words again and again and caught on his awful truth - “ _get you out.”_

“I _can’t_ get us both out,” Derek clarified to a disbelieving Stiles.

“One of you remains and so she grows stronger than ever on that story. Pining for each other, for a lost love - she’s already caught the scent of you two. She woke faster, she’s eating again already. She’ll eat all of us and save you for last, wolf-man. Or worse.”

“Worse?” Derek asked, unable look at Stiles now.

“Worse when your friends try to come to the rescue. Worse still when you watch more innocents fall into her trap with you.”

Stiles was looking at Derek with a mix of anger and frustration, his head tilting as he processed this.

“No. NO,” he said.

“I can’t leave this place,” Derek confessed. “But I can restore balance.”

“NO!” thundered Stiles.

 

***

 

Around them, the room shifted abruptly and they found themselves in front of the Hostess, barely a foot from the table. De Groulx was gone. Two empty seats now stood waiting at opposite ends, one by Gideon, one next to Raleigh. To the left of the Hostess, Marie had assumed a new seat, her face restored but ashen. Chabela was at the Hostess’ right hand now, and all of them stared at Derek and Stiles with hate.

“NO!”

Stiles looked back at Derek just once, furious, then took a running leap onto the table and grabbed the Hostess by the throat.

“You are gonna… let… Derek… go!” Stiles demanded as he tightend his grasp with one hand then two.

His attack was brief, but the shock in her eyes was worth it.

“Stiles! Don’t!” Derek yelled from behind him, tugging on his leg and belt at the same time.

Beneath Stiles’ hands, the Hostess transformed back into the great wolf Derek had encountered, black, enormous, and powerful. Stiles’ hands fell away from her thick neck and he scrabbled back from her fangs as she lunged. Derek pulled him out of reach, then stepped in front to shield him.

Gideon watched the Hostess with growing fear, Chabela leaning back into him as the wolf grew larger.

“No one ever touched her…” Gideon said, not believing what he saw.

“You’ll get us all killed in one night!” Chabela accused Stiles. “No one ever gets away!”

The great wolf roared with rage. Derek’s eyes flared again and he was half wolf already.

“Settle down now,” said Raleigh, confident in her place far from the wolf’s interest, far from its fangs.

“Pray,” said Marie. "There are many corners of Hell scattered across this world. You won’t leave ours unless she devours you.” She bowed her head down to the table, whispering words of magic, but to no avail.

The wolf leaped across Marie’s back, crushing the breath from her, and sank its teeth into Raleigh’s neck, snapping it with one shake of its head. Marie remained motionless, her mouth working furiously, even as the girl’s body hit the floor. Chabela screamed and Gideon found the strength to get up but not more. The wolf tore into Raleigh, swallowing entire chunks of her.

“Stiles, where did you come into this house, _exactly_?” Derek asked over his shoulder, but Stiles was transfixed by the girl’s fate, pale and shaking. Derek turned and took Stiles’ face in his hands. “Where did you first find yourself?”  
  
“I was reading the book, I fell asleep in Hale House.”

“And you woke up…?”  
  
“Here, a bedroom. I found it once before.”

“Find it again. Use your… your spark, whatever you have in you.”

Stiles looked around Derek’s shoulder, but the bloody scene grew worse by the minute. Marie had vanished, as had the others.

“And we do this while we’re running,” Derek suggested, and Stiles agreed instantly.

 

***

 

“Take my hand,” Stiles said as Derek stood for a second at a branch in the corridor. “We’ll use the book to get back. I’ve got it right here!”

“The book is still in Hale House,” Derek argued. “That thing in your hand is an image she made, a lie.”

Stiles reached into his pocket and pulled out a tangle of fibers and unwelcome tendrils.

“Oh, fuck me!” he yelled, flinging them to the floor. “Okay, so I’m _something_ , too, right? You believe that?”  
  
“I do now,” Derek said calmly, hoping to calm Stiles.

“So take my hand. Whatever this is, it works better when you’re touching me.”

Derek took his hand and held tight.

“Druid powers are very ironic,” Derek added, even more softly.

Stiles closed his eyes and raised his left hand, now tingling with renewed power.

“Don’t let go, Derek.”

It hurt more the harder he tried and Derek worked to pull that pain out of him.

Stiles rested his hand on the nearest wall, and it dissolved slowly, revealing a wide curving staircase, leading to a small door on a landing far above, the door to the bedroom and beyond that the Hale library and safety.

“How did you-?” Derek asked, his eyes shifting from the staircase to Stiles’ hand to his pale but beaming face.

“Scott can’t laugh at my Yoda jokes now. Come on!” Stiles said, and tugged Derek up. They climbed the steps quickly together. Derek opened the door at the top with his free hand, but there was only the void Stiles had seen before.

“Dammit,” Stiles said for both of them.

A deep and hungry growl came from behind them. The great wolf leaped up the huge staircase in three bounds and sank its teeth into Stiles’ arm before he could dodge, ripping buttons off even as Stiles tried to pull it away. Derek attacked her, but she struck and slashed him with her claws. Derek was left bleeding and dazed on the staircase while she dragged Stiles off like a fresh kill, down the stairs at a run.

 

***

 

Derek could hear voices now, Peter’s and Deaton’s, far off and unclear. His healing was slower, and the loss of Stiles panicked him. He staggered to his feet using the railing as a brace, then lurched halfway down, only to weaken and tumble the rest of the way. Stiles’ blood was like a fire in his brain, bringing him back to his senses. It smelled different now - anxiety, and anger, and something else - the trail on the floor was clear.

 

***

 

Stiles thumped along the floor behind her; he could feel the wolf’s teeth sink deeper into his wrist as he struggled. He grabbed door frames, furniture, whatever he could with his free hand and both legs. No part of her house resisted her wishes, and Stiles’ hand slid off everything, leaving Derek further and further from him. He grabbed at the final door only to have it slam on his fingers.

“Stiles,” came a sweet voice, and the Hostess gave him her hand, a very beautiful human hand.

“You _chewed off_ my _arm_. Go to Hell!” Stiles yelled.

“Tell me _your_ story,” she replied, and stood waiting, her hands clasped in front of her, suddenly peaceful.

Stiles took in this new room - it was the small bedroom where he’d started, where he and Derek had been heading, but relit with new candles, and - from somewhere - faint voices.

“I know how it ends, but tell me,” she repeated. “How did it start?”

“DEREK!” Stiles yelled, close to tears.

“Will he save you?” she asked, not mocking, but genuinely hopeful.

“He’ll try!” Stiles yelled. “Or I’ll get rid of you myself.”

 

***

 

Derek limped through the halls, but they no longer shifted, no longer led him further in or out. He could smell the odor of blood she’d left in his mouth, not human, not wolf, _not right_. It was all around him now, faint but present, and Stiles’ blood was here too, a trail that seemed to call out to him.

 

***

> _The Hale Library_
> 
> “Should _he_ be touching those?” the Sheriff asked as Peter riffled through every book on the shelves.
> 
> “If he values his hands, he won’t,” said Deaton loudly, and Peter drew back slowly from the books.
> 
> “Why do you have cursed books, Peter?” the Sheriff asked.” And why do you keep them where my son can find them?”
> 
> “Your son- “ Peter started into a long-building tirade, then noticed the Sheriff’s hand on his gun.
> 
> “Stiles has more power in him than my sister and I combined,” Deaton said.
> 
> Peter’s attention was again on Deaton, but the Sheriff slumped into the chair by the small table, unable to keep up.
> 
> “Stiles knows magic?” he asked, hoping for an answer that wouldn’t require rethinking his world for the third time that year.
> 
> “Stiles is… unique,” Deaton explained, as the Sheriff nodded vigorously, happy to hear praise without any terrifying details.
> 
> “Derek can handle himself,” Peter reasoned. “If he needs help, I can give Stiles the bite,” he added, intent on shaking the Sheriff out of his denial.
> 
> “No one will ever turn my son into a werewolf!” the Sheriff yelled, on his feet now, hand hovering near his gun.
> 
> “He turned me down years ago,” Peter replied calmly as Deaton held the Sheriff back with a hand to his chest.
> 
> The Sheriff’s moved away from his holster, but not far.
> 
> “So we get them out, Stiles _and_ the one relative I can stand being around for short periods,” Peter said, “and the book returns to the Hales.”
> 
> “For now - find the book,” Deaton said, trying to calm them both. “I trust Derek to do this; he has a … a bond with Stiles.”
> 
> “Yes, that _is_ an interesting story,” Peter teased.
> 
> “The interesting story is Derek sacrificing himself for Stiles,” Deaton said, mostly to the books on the shelf in front of him but both men heard.

 

*******

 

“Just one story,” the Hostess demanded in a honeyed voice as she seized Stiles by the neck with both hands, fingers sliding up along his rigid muscles. He could feel something on his skin, crawling, sliding over him, threads moving around his neck, under his skin now. He thought of Derek.

“Tell me a story, just one!”

“My friend Scott lost his inhaler -”

“No!” She shook him for emphasis. “The one who came for you. Tell me about Derek Hale.”

“Not much - to tell. He’s grouchy, unpleasant, poor communication skills” Stiles began, but he felt stranger by the moment - not thinking clearly, not remembering the right words, not able to stop. Beyond his own sputtering breath, he imagined footsteps.

 _Footsteps, weak, irregular, closer._ _Derek?_

“I can’t love him. We’re different -” Stiles said, his story running away from him.

“Ahhhh,” the Hostess sighed. “Love denied. Chabela thought the same of her wolf.”

The Hostess was in his mind now, and there were no doors to stop her.

“I just - Derek deserves someone like him, someone good.”  
  
_A shuddered exhalation, pain and grief, behind him_. _Derek!_

The Hostess looked past Stiles and smiled at the pain she saw on Derek’s face.

“I’m not a good person,” Stiles continued. “I’m - I can’t control this thing inside.”

The Hostess looked more loving now than he’d ever seen her. He could feel her in his blood, threading through his mind, seeking more.

Derek flicked out his claws and her eyes flared brighter than before as they moved between Stiles’ face, tight in her grip, and Derek’s, looming at the edge of the candlelight.

“Fight for each other, save each other!” she urged them. “Ache when you cannot, when you fail, over and over. Your stories will be eternal,” she cried out, and she was content.

Derek lunged forward and wrapped Stiles in his arms, pressing his lips to Stiles’ right ear and whispering, “Ignore her, ignore what you see. Believe my voice.”

Stiles’ thoughts cleared and he felt the Hostess pull back slightly.

“I do. I always do,” Stiles admitted. “Except right now you’re trying to sacrifice yourself for me.”

The Hostess tried to maintain her hold, but Derek pulled hard and Stiles was free. Derek grabbed his hand and they ran again, blood-stained carpet and creaking floorboards leading them back to the only exit they knew.

The Hostess straightened her dress. She was calm now. There were empty seats at her table, but the three guests who were left would sustain her for a bit longer. She could sense her freedom. She could hear the voices closer now. As she gained power, the walls between grew thinner.

 

***

 

“Why would you save me, Derek? All those people that need me, I nearly killed them,” Stiles mumbled, still woozy as Derek carried him. “They need you more. Scott needs you - he’s not ready to be Pack Dad, believe me. Cora needs you, wherever she is now. Peter - no, Peter doesn’t need anyone.”

“He does. Peter does most of all,” Derek chided.

“And my Dad,” Stiles continued, oblivious. “You’re the only supernatural thing he trusts apart from Lydia. You’d be the son he always wanted.”

Derek ignored this, but the silence that followed hurt him. “And?” he prompted, stumbling on the stairs they’d climbed once already.  
  
Stiles was stumped, but Derek’s eyebrows gave him the clue he needed.

Stiles tugged his arm, dragging him up the rest of the way as their squabble continued.

“Yes, you dumbass, YES. ME - I need you! I’ve had it bad for you since the first time you threatened me in the woods. That confused look you have on your face says a _lot_ more about you, Derek, honestly. Trust that people love you.”

They collapsed, bloody and gasping against the same door that hadn’t worked. Derek put his head in his hands.

“Why am I giving up my life for you? It’s not healthy, Stiles. You’re like some kind of werewolf insanity…”

The great wolf snarled at the foot of the stairs - one, maybe two leaps from them, its muzzle dark and wet, eyes blazing red.

“Tell me your name, Stiles, your real name. I can get you out, but you have to -”

At the foot of the stairs, the large black shape stalked upward, step by step, fangs glistening as its lips curled back.

“You’re coming with me, Derek. I’m not letting go.”

"Stiles!" Derek urged.

The doorway into the void narrowed and shrank, and the stairs tilted even as they hesitated. The house was realigning to Her, narrowing their options for escape.

"My name is- “

As Stiles spoke, the hall darkened and his head throbbed. The wolf lunged up the stairs and Derek leaped downward to meet it, entirely wolf himself in just the seconds it took to collide and sink his fangs in.

Stiles was dizzy, but he was still on the shifting stairs where two wolves fought; there were voices, far off - his father’s, somehow, and Deaton’s, and Peter’s low rumble.

Derek reemerged from the battle, staggering up the stairs, torn and bleeding, his mouth full of fur and flesh, which he spat out. The monstrous wolf lay motionless at the foot of the stairs for the moment. Derek's hands gripped Stiles tight by both shoulders, painfully, as if he’d never let go.

"My real name is Mie-” Stiles stumbled over this tiny moment. He didn’t want it to be _here_ in some alternate hell dimension that he shared _this_ with Derek.

Derek pulled him closer, so that Stiles could smell the blood on him, so only he could hear Stiles’ answer.

Stiles spoke the name his mother had called him, a tangle of consonants that he’d fled when she died, becoming Stiles.

Derek's eyebrows rose slowly to a peak in the middle and an expression of happiness, _true_ happiness spread across his face.

“I like that," Derek said softly, staring deeper into Stiles’ eyes. “My mother gave me the name Silverio, after her grandfather.”

“Silverio- “

Stiles smiled a warm, tilted smile in return, even as he realized what he was losing. He felt the house jolt again, and Derek’s eyes flared blue. Stiles’ head pounded ferociously as the door swung open, and behind Derek, he saw movement on the stairs.

“GO, Stiles!” Derek shouted, and pushed Stiles into the void beyond the door with every ounce of strength he had. “Close the book! Let this story end. Do it for me, for my family.”

He roared as he hurled Stiles from him - for the sheer power it ripped from his body, for the unfathomable pain of losing the one spark of light in his life, for the pain in Stiles’ wide brown eyes as he grasped at anything, everything, to stay.

“No!” Stiles yelled, but his words came out muffled, distorted. “HOLD ON! Derek?!”

 

***

 

 

* * *

 


	4. The Boys Who Were Bound

__

**_The Boys Who Were Bound_ **

 

_Hale House_

Peter’s eyes hadn’t stopped flicking from one book to the next, up and down the walls of the library since the moment he entered. He was home again, in the only part of his life left unburnt, but a different question pressed him and it wasn’t how Deaton had hidden the room, or why. He wondered instead _What is Stiles? How did I miss it?_

Deaton stared out the library window through the hole Stiles had made; it framed the wide yellow moon. _Stiles isn’t here. Where is the book?_

The Sheriff was on one knee, eyes on the carpet, on what he prayed wasn’t blood spatter. _Will I get you back this time? Oh god, this is fresh._

Peter heard it first, a crackling sound that seemed miles away, then close behind him, still beyond human hearing. With it came a new sensation, deadly and inhuman. He was afraid to turn his head and see what brought that chill to him. Then he caught a different scent of fear, unmistakably Stiles’ terror mixing with blood - Derek’s.

Deaton bent in half at the sudden, jagged pain in his head, like he was being pulled apart. A powerful magic tore open the tiny space and Stiles _unfolded_ in front of his eyes. He could only whisper the spell, he was so afraid of what was coming. Yet a more powerful force was sealing the rift back up. The ragged edges of their world were rewoven, leaving the impossible boy behind, screaming.

The Sheriff, his fingertips red with the fresh blood he’d just touched, saw the light from above him flicker and a shadow fell over him. He looked up to see his only son, more terrified than even the nogitsune had left him.

Stiles clutched a tiny book with his fingertips like the only handhold on a sheer rock face.

“Derek!” was the only word Stiles could scream, over and over. He was watching something no one else in the room could see.

 

***

 

Stiles was in Hale House again and both were in ruins. Derek's face was just a few feet from his - half human, half wolf, bloody - drifting and darkening and still Stiles tried to hold him there. Blood welled from the slashes across Derek's face and neck, dripping on Stiles' outstretched hands as the portal twisted violently.

"Leave Hale House. Never go back, ever!" Derek shouted, real panic in his voice that he might fail to save Stiles.

Derek's presence faded as more hands took hold of Stiles. Stiles strained to hear him, to not lose sight of him, but the deep voice was pushed to the corner of his mind, the face dimmer and more distant, coalescing onto a new page in the book.

“You and I…” Derek said, his voice so tender it was lost in the chaos. “Goodbye, Stiles.”

“DEREK!” he roared, tears streaming.

"Stiles!” said the three men around him, and in that instant Derek was gone.

“Where were you? Where did you go?" It was his father’s voice - relief at holding him again, fear and anger that he would still lose him for good sooner, not later.

“What was chasing you?” Deaton asked at his ear, as calmly as he could, knowing an ancient hunger had come too close to entering Beacon Hills through the gateway Stiles controlled.

“How did you find this, Stiles?” Peter demanded, close to Stiles’ other ear, quieter, and so very curious, his eyes never leaving the book.

The adults were pushed aside briefly by Scott and Lydia, stifling Stiles with hugs as the shock abated and the pain cut all the way into him. So many faces and voices and hands held onto him, all at once. None of them was Derek.

"Where is he?" Stiles asked weakly.

"You've been missing for three days, Stiles. Where were _you_?" his father asked, embracing him again.  
  
"I have to go back,” Stiles insisted, his face twisting into a sob. "He saved me and- I tried to hold onto him but he’s still in the house!”

"Derek's not here. No one's seen him in weeks," Scott said. "We were looking for _you_."

Deaton slowly closed his eyes and prayed for Derek.

Stiles’ fingers were red with Derek’s blood and white-knuckled where he gripped the book, his only hold on Derek now. He felt Peter’s hand covering his and closing around the book. He wrenched it free and snarled with rage, making Peter flinch for the briefest second. He composed his face in an attempt to show concern, but Stiles had seen the fear.

“Let me _see_ it,” Deaton said shakily. “Close the book. Please.”

“ _No._ ”

The word made Deaton pull back his hand, not as fast as Peter had and not as far.

“Stiles, what is it? What do you have there?” his father asked. Stiles held the small book pinned against his chest now, and relented only when his father gently pulled his arm outward.

“It’s Derek,” Stiles said, red eyes still full of anxiety and loss. “Deaton knows. Peter knows.”

Stiles curled his arm back, out of his father’s grip and tight up against his chest till the corners of the covers cut into him. It felt better there.

Scott and Lydia were both giving him odd looks, but he no longer cared. The room slid away, ever quieter, until Stiles was unconscious. His father carried him slowly down the broken staircase to the ambulance, but the book remained caged in his fingers, close to his heart.

 

***

 

Stiles woke briefly in the ambulance, strapped to a gurney; red and blue lights flashed through the windows, each making its own distinct pain in his head. Outside, his father’s voice was concern covering anger, listening to the paramedic, while Deaton’s was stress, normally so well hidden.

“We’ll meet you at the hospital,” Stiles heard Scott say as his motorcycle roared.

A movement at the rear door made him flinch and tighten reflexively, but the book was still digging into his breastbone, hard and sharp and silent. A woman with long dark hair slipped into the ambulance unnoticed by anyone outside and pressed a finger to her lips. She blinked slowly, watching Stiles intently and with obvious disbelief that such a person could even exist - exactly the way Derek looked at him far too often.

She came closer and took Stiles’ free hand, laying it gently over the book. She stared at him for what felt like an even longer time until a tear rolled across her cheek and fell. “Never let go of him,” she said softly, her eyes gentle and warm like Derek’s. Stiles shook his head vigorously in agreement. A moment later she slipped back out.

_I have a hundred questions for you, 99 of them about Derek._

The ambulance door slammed shut, the lights dimming as Stiles faded out again.

*** 

> “You see, I haven’t killed him. I haven’t killed you either.”
> 
> The Hostess’s voice was sweet again, even warm; the wolf had vanished entirely. She leaned in, close to Derek’s ear, and whispered words more devastating than any weapon.
> 
> “How must he feel when the best you can do is ‘Goodbye, Stiles’? No grand declaration of love…”
> 
> “I don’t do those,” Derek said through gritted teeth and tears.
> 
> “As bad as Stiles feels, it’s nothing like what _you’re_ feeling, watching the book close on you, without Stiles. Forever.”
> 
> Derek crumpled, his powerful body losing strength. The Hostess smiled at this.                                                                        
> 
> “So empty you are, all the things you’ve lost over the years… And now him as well?”
> 
> “I saved him,” Derek whispered.
> 
> “No,” she mused. “But that can be the first story you tell us.”

 

_***_

_Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital_

Stiles was blocked in from both sides.

“This is real? A magic book that eats people?” the Sheriff asked from the right, shaking his head.

“Yes, it’s _all_ real, Dad - banshees, nogitsune, ail the were-varieties…” Stiles insisted, exasperated but weak. He leaned back on to the pillows. _My glowing fingers included. Pretty sure that was real._

“I’m sorry -” his father apologized.

“I can tell you everything you need to know about that book,” Peter offered from the left side, in his most helpful manner.

“How do _you_ even know what it is?” Stiles asked, trying to sit up in the awkward angle of the hospital bed.

“Eavesdropping?” Peter said, tilting his head slightly.

Peter waited for Stiles’ disgust to pass but it didn’t. He shrugged and waited for the next question.

“My sister Talia told me the same story. But it was a _fiction_. She made it up to take Derek’s mind off his losses, to rebuild his confidence….” Peter explained in a soothing voice pitched for the Sheriff.

Stiles stayed flat on his back but spoke up loud and clear: “It’s a _true_ story, and Derek knew that. He kept the book safe -”

“Until you broke into Hale House and took it?” the Sheriff asked unhelpfully.

“Derek came for me. He’s in this book right now and his life is in danger,” Stiles argued, waving the small book above his face.

“Give me that,” Peter said, reaching out for it again.

“It wasn’t yours to guard,” Stiles snapped, pulling the book beneath the sheets. He slid it under his body, the sharp corners digging into his side.

“It belongs to the Hales; even Deaton will agree with me on that,” Peter maintained.

“You need to give it to him, son,” the Sheriff said as calmly as he could.

“Dad, I can’t.”

“Stiles -”

“It’s my family’s responsibility,” Peter added, holding out his hand. “Talia would want it back.”

“Do you know where Derek is?” Stiles asked fiercely, jerking himself up on one elbow.

“I know the book should be kept safe in our library,” Peter argued, then leaned closer to add quietly just for Stiles “which is protected by several warding charms…”

“Son, he has legal claim to the book. Give it to him,” said the Sheriff, as close to being done as he’d ever been.

“Because _I know_ where Derek is,” Stiles replied, ignoring his father, “and he’s going to die if I don’t save him.

“Son.”

“I’ll _show_ it to Deaton,” Stiles offered. “Unless Peter has any magical powers,” he continued, not even blinking as he stared Peter down.

It was a brave attempt, until his left arm gave out and he tilted back toward the pillow again, his father's hand cradling his head

“Peter? In the hall. Now,” the Sheriff barked and Peter stared at the two of them, baffled that they could outwit him.

 

***

 

Stiles slept poorly even after he’d eaten the hospital food and the extras Scott snuck in, after Scott and Lydia had finally agreed to leave him be. But in the night hospital, he heard things. Beeping, whirring machines, the squeak of nurses’ shoes on polished tile, the sounds of pain. He knew that cacophony from the nights he’d spent by his mother’s side, and his father’s, refusing to leave. Later, in the dark of the night came the moaning, and beyond it all he heard screams - very faint, very far away, and frequent. Eventually he drifted off to sleep and the tears dried on his cheeks.

 

***

 

“Why did you go, Derek? _Where_ did you go?” Stiles asked over and over until Derek finally answered.

“I had to leave. Cora needed me.”

“ _I_ needed- “

“No you didn’t. You needed to finish high school, as… _normally_ as possible, given this town.”

“I’m seriously confused about us, Derek - and about why I lose arguments with you when this is _my_ dream.”

“Confused? About us?  
  
“You, in particular.”

“Ask me.”

“I have a … I like you.”

“I know.”

“ _‘I know’_? Are you wolfy Han Solo?”

“That would make you

“Don’t say Leia!”

“I was going to say Chewbacca.”

“Are we really going to banter about _Star Wars_ now?”

“I suppose Han could have been a were-wookiee…” his Derek mused.

 

***

 

“OH MY GOD!” Stiles snapped awake, infuriated.

He lay there for a full hour, staring at the ceiling, convincing himself the screaming was not in his head, and couldn’t be in the hospital either, and absolutely was not Derek, not at all. But his heart was racing now, pounding for him to do something, to know, to find out for sure.

He sat up, carefully untangled the wires and tubes around his right arm and wobbled to his feet. Moonlight streamed in through a high, narrow window. He’d taken one step into the pool it made on the floor when sharp pains jabbed in his arm and he jerked backward. He briefly scanned the machine’s settings - an alarm would ring if he detached anything. _You know me too well, Dad. Congratulations on winning this round._

With his left hand cramping around the book, he detached it slowly from where it had bonded with his chest. The interlocked cover opened more easily this time, and the pages were fresher, and more vivid, but just four stories remained.

The one with a river-wrapped village was still there at the front, faded, but he could make out a word he hadn’t understood before, “Frahan-sur-Semois”, Marie’s last place of exile and the start of this mess.

Another page was clearly Gideon’s, written in a fine, controlled, looping hand. It hurt to read the writing, and the story made little sense. Chabela’s story was clear from the large numerals down the left side of the page, dropping like her coins into the well. Her story was illustrated with a wolf’s head and a woman contorted by a moment of terror. _Who is the wolf in your story, Chabela?_

The next pages two pages were new. One had turned black, struck from memory, revealing nothing. Despite what looked like a conscious effort to hide the story, words and illustrations showed through the dark swaths of ink, hints of what remained.

_Yeah, I got out, bitch You can’t just erase me._

He knew Derek would be waiting on the next page; he wanted to read that story and didn’t dare.

“If Derek got in, how do I-”

“Close it. Don’t open it ever again,” warned Deaton from behind him and Stiles startled, dropped the book, then snatched it back before it could hit the floor.

“How fucking long have you been there?” Stiles asked.

“Long enough to tell what you’re thinking, and it isn’t possible.”

“He did it - I can do it. It’s possible,” he stated, staring defiantly at Deaton.

“Nothing about _you_ seems possible, or even probable. You are an imbalance, as my sister says.”

Stiles squinted, evaluating the words.

“Thanks.”

“Give me the book and I will keep it safe, forever. Derek will be protected.”

“You believe me! Why didn’t you say-?” Stiles was briefly happy.

“There were many people around when you escaped and only one of them should have the book.”

“Yeah, me.”

“It belongs to the Hales by a very old agreement. And so by rights to me. We kept it safe.”

“You’re not a Hale.”

“I was their emissary.”

“Gideon called me that,” Stiles said, more interested in himself than an old curse.

Deaton’s demeanor shifted immediately, and he moved around Stiles in the dark of the hospital room to see his eyes. He was inches away when he stopped, his profile and Stiles’ caught in the moonbeam.

“Gideon disappeared from the Hale mansion in Virginia in the … 1860s,” Deaton whispered, more curious than ever.  
  
“1862. Said he was the Hales’ emissary, wanted to master the book, to prove something. He’s in here. With Derek and the rest.”

Stiles pulled the book toward his chest again but Deaton slammed it shut with both hands, alarmed.

“Never touch it! Never look at it, never read it, and never talk to it.”

“Way too late, Doc. Look, I have to get him out. _”_

“There’s no way to save him,” Deaton said, tugging at the edges of the book. “You know nothing about what controls this book.”

Stiles stood his ground, wondering just how powerful Deaton was.

“I control it,” Stiles said firmly and Deaton’s hands lifted slowly off of Stiles’, away from the book.

Deaton stared down in surprise at this, then back at Stiles. He changed tactics.

“ _You’re_ the reason Derek Hale is gone. But he left instructions for me. For what to do with you.”

“ _Do with me_? He said you’d _teach_ me.”

“I don’t think you’re any more ready than Scott was. You’re in high school. You’re making choices with your life and your soul based on- “

"How did Derek get in?" Stiles demanded, his fingers closing around the book. “How did he find the way in so quickly? Did you help him?”

"Of course.  But he was only able to do it because he wanted to. He found _you_. He _had to_ find you, as you put it, and that made it possible.”

"He just _wanted_ it? That's all? "

"That's a _lot_ , Stiles,” Deaton said. “When a Hale loves you…” He watched Stiles with the same curiosity he’d shown earlier. “You should probably tell your father,” Deaton added.

"Not that I'm going back in - he’d kill me. … No, literally.”

“That would be a very interesting conversation,” Peter said as closed the door quickly behind him.

“How the hell does everyone get past the night nurse?” Stiles whispered furiously.

“Derek has very poor luck, generally, and even worse luck romantically-“ Peter  began.

“And that’s your doing!” Stiles replied.

“You’re just part of a long string of disasters, and now you’ve gotten him killed, or trapped forever. I can’t imagine a worse fate.”

“Except to be trapped with you,” Stiles muttered.

Peter’s fangs and claws came out in a flash.  “Derek’s missing, you’re the reason. Why shouldn’t I just rip that book out of your hands and tear your head off-?”

Deaton shocked them out of their sparring by encouraging Stiles: “Your father is a good man. Tell him how you feel about Derek. Tell him you have a real reason to try.”

“Try what?” the Sheriff asked from the door, followed by, “And why are you two in Stiles’ room after midnight?”

“He was just about to give the book to me,” Peter lied, his face fully human again.

Stiles just snorted at the lie, but when his father turned to him, he was serious.

“You’re recovering quickly, son,” the Sheriff noted. “Good thing I set the alarms. Now get back in bed.”

“If I might -” Peter ventured but the Sheriff ignored him.

“You are giving that book up, and then you and I are moving to the opposite side of this country.”

“Oh, like that’ll stop me,” Stiles sneered, well past the limits of what was wise.

His father took the book from Stiles’ hands, sensing exactly how foolish Stiles was about to be.

“We need to seal the book for good,” Deaton argued. “I should be able to.”

“That sounds like a fantastic idea,” the sheriff agreed. “No, you sit, Stiles!” he added without even turning around.

Stiles sat, much to his own surprise.

“The book, Sheriff,” Peter insisted, but Stiles watched his father hand it over to Deaton.

“Peter!” Stiles begged, desperate.

“I demand our Hale family property back. Look, I miss Derek as much as everyone here,” Peter said. “He’s a hero. He saved you, Stiles, by sacrificing his life…” Peter continued, attempting to sound sincere. “But the book is our responsibility, and he knew that, better than anyone. With Derek gone, it falls to me to keep it safe. And keep _you_ safe,” he added, looking directly at Stiles with practiced sincerity.

The sheriff sighed long and loud, then moved the book from Deaton to Peter who closed both hands around it instantly. Stiles’ eyes never left the only doorway he had to get to Derek. Deaton’s eyes followed it just as closely.

Stiles faced a shifting crisis of multiple betrayals.

“Give me that!” Stiles yelled, leaping up from the bed again.

“Stiles!” the sheriff bellowed, then restrained himself, his face collapsing in worry

Stiles relented at the sight of his father in so much pain.

“I can _not_ lose you, son.”

The hug that followed was long and intense.

“Dad, you won’t -”

“I _know you_ ,” he said, by Stiles’ ear. “I _will_ lose you, if I don’t stop this supernatural nonsense, right here and now. If Derek’s trapped in that book, then better him than you.”

Stiles couldn’t even speak. He pushed away, his mouth moving, but the anger was too strong.

Peter left quickly, Deaton behind him and when Stiles refused to speak, the Sheriff left as well.

 

***

 

_BHHS, the next day_

“He’s _in_ the book?” Scott asked for the second time. “Like, _inside_ …?”

“Yes! Why is that so hard for everyone to believe?” Stiles yelled.

“I mean, I saw it in your hand, but it’s really small-” Scott reasoned.

“Lydia, it’s possible, right?” Stiles looked to her for support.

“Some people think magical _… occurrences_ …are just a form of space/time variance. It would explain my ability to sense the future. It’s as plausible as you having a werewolf boyfriend.”

Stiles blushed. “Wow thanks for the positivity.”

“By which I mean very, _very_ plausible,” Lydia explained. “You’re not subtle when you like someone.”

“Yeah, when were you going to get around to telling me you two were, like, serious?” Scott asked.

“We aren’t- Nothing ever- “ Stiles fidgeted. “I was going to tell you all when… I knew he felt the same way?”

“Well you know it now - he saved you,” Scott offered hopefully.

“Yeah, he… he proved that, in a really suicidal way. So that’s great, just great.” Stiles slumped on the bed.

“The only thing I still don’t understand is why you haven’t plunged blindly back into the book to get him out,” Lydia noted. “That’s really more your style.”

Scott nodded in total agreement.

“Because I don’t _have it_ anymore. My dad made me give it to Deaton but then Peter said it was his. Peter will probably find a way to use it for his own ends, and Deaton just wants to close the door forever,” Stiles complained, pausing to look for support.

“Maybe I could get it back from Deaton-” Scott began.

“Plus I also kind of don’t know how to get back in yet,” Stiles admitted. “I tried touching it, talking to it- okay, you can stop making that face, Scott, I _know_ what kind of evil I’m dealing with.”

“The nogitsune,” Lydia said, staring at Stiles. “That darkness. It makes sense a cursed book would let in cursed people. Wolves are-.”

“Hey!” Scott protested.

“She’s just talking about the mythology,” Stiles said. “You didn't get possessed by a dark spirit. I did,” he said, his hand on Scott’s shoulder now. “You’re still _good_ , or at least, an alpha.”

Scott had no answer that could make Stiles happier, but he had to try: “You’re good too.”

“I’m not though,” Stiles said quietly. “I got people killed in there.”

“You know how many we’ve lost because of my decisions,” Scott countered.

“But if you can’t get back in, then you aren’t evil,” Lydia noted. “Or you aren’t evil _anymore_.”

“You need to talk to Peter,” was Scott’s advice. “He’s the only Hale left in town.”

“There’s Cora.”

Scott and Stiles stared at Lydia like she’d just made Derek reappear out of a top hat.

“Why didn’t you -?” they asked simultaneously.

“She’s… keeping her distance from Peter. Smart girl.”

 

***

 

Melissa popped in briefly to remind Scott of his overdue homework, and when he’d left with Lydia, she sat with Stiles for a moment.

“You’ll be released in a couple of hours,” she said, but Stiles was preoccupied. She went the direct route. “That’s an odd story to make up - falling into a book? Then Derek coming in after you, and he gets you out, so you want to go back to save him too.”

Now she had his attention.

“It happened. All of it, just like I said. Book, monster, Derek, me.”

“It’s just - a bit far-fetched, even for Beacon Hills. Even for you.”

Stiles looked at her, his other mother, the one non-Sheriff parent he trusted, and she gave him a worried smile.

“We did a scan when you were brought in. I compared it to your previous scans from the - when you were … when you were in here last.”

“After I was possessed by a fox spirit, you can say it.”

“You were already recovering really well; only an expert would have noticed the damage.”

“But?”

“All the dark areas are gone. Whatever happened to you at Hale House, you came back different, and that’s not scientifically possible.”

“You believe me? So you know I can’t let Derek die.”

“Young love is a bitch. It makes you do really stupid things. Look at me and Scott’s father.”

“This will be the very last stupid thing I do, I’m sure,” a re-energized Stiles said. “No more stupid after this.”

“Your father is smart enough not to believe that, and so am I.”

“I- “

“No you can’t. You haven’t thought about it. What if- “

The page was loud, and insistent. “I’ve gotta take this.”

“I’m good,” Stiles assured her.  “Just gonna rest till Dad comes to get me.”

 

***

> Derek tried shutting out the painful words as she spoke them, but her house was shifting again, becoming ever more familiar. Smoke from a fire he’d never felt filled his head, and screams came from far below him, and then laughter, bright and ringing from Laura’s room. He was in Hale House, and he was ten.
> 
> _Stiles_ he said, to center himself.
> 
> “There we go,” whispered the hostess, in his head now. “So many things yet to lose, so many things to cling to.”
> 
> Derek fought against the hallucinations but they became more real every second.
> 
> _MIecyslaw!_ He saw Stiles, brilliant, hyperactive, fascinating Stiles, anchoring him briefly to a lost reality.
> 
> “G o n e,” she whispered, and Stiles vanished into the void in his mind. “But he’ll never stop trying to get back to you.”
> 
> “You _let_ him escape!”
> 
> “Of course I did. What was it your mother always said?”
> 
> Talia was standing in front of him now, concerned, and he was thirteen, in his room with his Superman sheets.
> 
> “What was that story she told you…?” came the Hostess’s voice.
> 
> Talia spoke to him, her hand holding Derek’s chin up, gentle but firm.
> 
> “We thrive in this world because we are part of it, and we work to keep it safe,” Talia said, her warm eyes on his - more than enough to make her words stick. “You are a predator, but you don’t have to be a killer.”
> 
> “And you’re certainly no killer,” said the Hostess, using Talia’s face, Talia’s voice. “But Stiles - he is a very dangerous boy.”
> 
> Talia vanished as Derek lunged at her, claws out, but now he was ten again and Laura was tugging his hands to follow her and the dinner downstairs smelled so good.

 

***

 

_Stiles’ bedroom_

Stiles slept fitfully his first night home, waking from nightmares of the Hostess and Derek fighting, and Derek’s bloodied face twisting farther and farther away into the same darkness that Stiles was falling through, tumbling down and down and-

He woke with a jolt, a sweaty mess of tangled limbs and bedsheets, only to feel a hand press firmly over his mouth.

“It’s always you, isn’t it?” said a familiar hissing voice. “Every time Derek is in danger, _there you are_.”

Stiles struggled. Peter took his hand away, but only half an inch, just in case.

“Peter,” Stiles said coldly.

Stiles pushed back up Peter’s body, tried to wiggle free, but Peter was all muscle.

“And to think I offered you the bite. I was a fool to let you turn me down. You really do have a spark in you.”

“What _is_ it with your family and lurking in my bedroom?”

Peter ignored the question.

“I’m not scared of much,” he continued. “Being locked up in a cell with Valack, maybe; very little else. But that book is powerful. Even Talia feared it. I need to know everything she knew, and you stole my nephew, so talk. Tell me the story. From the beginning.”

“Talia was right,” Stiles said. “The not letting you near it part especially.”

“How did Derek find you? How did he know?”

“I called to him,” Stiles said, and it was a half-truth Peter accepted.

“What’s inside?” Peter asked, his façade slipping to reveal genuine curiosity.

“A monster,” Stiles said, adding a little drama.

“The monster I’ve heard about,” Peter said.

“From listening in on Derek-”

“I was listening in when our _grandfather_ first gave the book to her,” Peter said angrily, and in his tone, Stiles heard all the times Peter had been turned away - by Scott after the bite, by Stiles himself - all the times he’d been passed over, for Talia, then for Derek, then Deaton.

“I can’t let you keep the book,” Stiles stated as he struggled to lift Peter off him again. “I’ll get it back eventually.”

“Can you save him?” Peter asked, and this too was sincere.

“You don’t get the book - not if I lose him forever, not even if I get him out -”

“Who are you to take it?”

“It would _devour_ you,” Stiles said coldly.

Peter heard the truth in his heartbeat, and he smelled the fear that still moved through Stiles.

“I get that you’re scared of it,” Stiles continued. “You should be. But it’s your turn to talk. What makes you think you can into the book?”

“Any Hale can, so the story goes.”

“Anyone with darkness inside, so you’re definitely capable.”

“And no one ever gets out.”

“I guess there was never a Hale brave enough until Derek. Now get the hell out of my bedroom. You are not invited.”

“I’m not a _vampire_.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

The Sheriff knocked softly. “You awake, son?”

“Yeah, Dad. Just talking to myself. Come in.”

Peter was furious but when the knob turned, he was gone.  Stiles closed the window behind him and locked it.

“You have a call,” the Sheriff said from the doorway, “on the land line for some reason. It’s Lydia. She said to wake you up, no matter what.”

 

***

 

_Lydia’s bedroom_

Cora was sitting cross-legged on Lydia’s bed when Stiles arrived, looking down at her hands, long dark hair falling across her face. Stiles wasn’t quite ready for how strong the family resemblance was, and he wanted nothing more than to see Derek again.

“So… Lydia’s house…” Stiles began, looking at everything in the bedroom but Cora. He was already pacing.

“Where else would I stay?” She kept her eyes down. “Was he alive when he got you out?”

Caught off guard, Stiles took a second to answer.

“Yes. … Barely.” His voice shook, and she raised her eyes to his. “He was okay when he got there, burst the doors apart with his hands, but after he fought her, twice…”

“Her?”

“’The Hostess’ is what they called her.“

“They?”

“There were others in there. Six. Three now.”

“What is she?”

“Shapeshifter? Demon? I … I don’t know what she is.”

“Our family has the worst luck,” Cora said quietly and looked back down at her hands. “God, our old house gives me the creeps. I wish it had just burned away, all of it, including the library. Why were you in Hale House the first place?” she asked.

“Trying to find Derek.”

Cora exhaled, a short laugh. “You wouldn’t have found him haunting that place - not like he used to. He’s…different now.”

“He can turn into a wolf, 100%,” Stiles said with a mix of fascination, pride and envy, just happy to be talking about Derek again.

“That’s not what I mean. He’s playful. He smiles again,” she added, smiling herself. “That all happened between my last visit and when he came down to … help me, so I have to think it’s your influence.”  She looked up at Stiles again.  “You’re a bad influence on everyone, from what I hear, but you made my brother happy again.”

“Derek? Happy??  Hard to believe…”

Cora stared at Stiles until he squirmed and returned to pacing.

“Is he still alive now?” she asked after a moment.

“Yes.” Stiles was quick and confident in this as he turned to her.

“How do you know?”

“His story is still here. It’s got some new things in it, but it’s here, look.” He pulled the book from his pocket.

“Is that the book? You have the book?! In your _pants?_ ”

“Well there were a lot of times Dad worked late so I hung around the station; pickpockets are very happy to share their secrets, not at all like magicians, so I -”

“You robbed Peter again?”

“No - I saved your _brother_ , _again_. Look, Derek’s right here -”  
  
“Don’t open it!” Cora cried, scrabbling away across the bedspread.

“It won’t - don’t worry, nothing happens.” He opened to the page where Derek’s story was written and held it out to her.

Her eyes widened as she leaned in. The page before her was small, but neatly written in Derek’s hand, and stained with blood.

“The blood was already there - I think,” Stiles explained.

“Let’s close it,” she said, pushing the covers together with her warm hands outside Stiles’.

“I have a plan,” Stiles said, confident now she’d hear him out.

“Lydia warned me you would.”

Stiles looked briefly hurt. “Did she say it would be a terrible idea?”

“Insane, I think, was her word,” Cora said, watching him take the word as a compliment.

“Yeah, well she’s the smartest person I know. But it’ll still work.”

Cora rolled her eyes. “You’re perfect for him,” she said.

“Not really used to discussing Derek with his sister,” Stiles said.

“Maybe get used to it. Like most of the men in our family, he’s fairly incompetent in a lot of things, and overly dramatic.”

“Totally with you on the second part, but he’s saved me more than a few times.”

“He’s a mess when it comes to feelings, dating, flirting - God, even talking to a person he likes- “

“Wait, how does that make me perfect for him?”

“Tell me your incredible plan, Stiles,” she said, folding her arms.

“Okay that’s just - uncanny,” he said under his breath. “Did your whole family practice exasperated sighing together too?”

“How do we rescue my brother?” Cora repeated.

“I go back,” he said, in the most ‘obviously’ tone of voice.

“You told Lydia you couldn’t. What’s changed?”

“I need to be a wolf, a Hale wolf with Hale blood. I need to _become_ a Hale.”

Her expression shifted from tolerant indulgence to rampant disbelief.

“That’s just-”  
  
“Peter’s idea. From years ago, you know, but I feel like his offer still stands- ”

“- _completely fucking_ insane.”

“I’m doing it,” Stiles stated defiantly.

“But you don’t have the book.”

“It’s right here- ” and he held up his now-empty hands, then looked at hers, folded tightly around it “-in your hands now. Wow you’re good. So you’re stealing it back?”

“He’s my brother. Want to hear _my_ plan?” she asked, tucking the book under the pillow.

“You double cross me when Derek’s life is in danger?”

Cora’s eyes flashed red. “Sit. And listen.”

 

***

 

* * *

_  
_

**_CODA_ **

_Hale House, some time later_

 

Stiles was alone at the top of the wide stairs, cross-legged one moment, pacing the next, all the while trying to block out Lydia and Cora’s conversation just outside the front door. His fingers nimbly turned the book over until - as he imagined the look on Derek’s face - his arm twinged and the book tumbled beyond his fingertip to land a few steps lower.

“I’m coming in, Derek,” he said when he’d retrieved it.  “I’m doing this for you, or for us, or for me honestly, but you won’t like it, not any of it. Then again, does anything make you happy? … Wait, I should know this.”

Stiles thought hard for a solid minute.

“You like lofts - god knows why, no heat, even less privacy; you live with way too little lighting; you really like books. You love wearing henleys and jeans that fit _incredibly._ You love it when you’re right and I’m wrong, so my plan _will_ make you happy _…_ and I know you love it when I shut up.”

Stiles stopped talking, took a deep breath full of odd new odors, opened the book carefully and dragged a wolf’s claw down the black page where the Hostess had blotted out his story.

_Your story ends now._

**END OF PART 1.**

 


	5. TEASER

**PART 2 COMING 2019**

 

**_TEASER_ **

***

“He’s very important.”

It was Claudia's hurt tone as much as his own unyielding temper that he heard in Stiles’ voice, the Sheriff realized. Unexpectedly, it provoked anger.

“ _You_ are important, do you get that? Far more important than Derek!”

“Derek’s important to _me_! We’re….” Stiles voice trailed off in a rare silence for the Stilinski kitchen, and his eyes were wide, unblinking, burdened.

The sheriff came to all his life's realizations slowly, because some things just weren’t true, so why entertain them? Werewolves, even Scott with fangs and claws and glowing eyes, didn't _really_ exist, up until the moment his brain _let_ them exist. Sudden realization was not his strength, but he could see this truth when it stood in front of him, hoping, with all of Claudia's intensity.

Stiles knew all this about his father; he waited as long as he had to. The sheriff studied his only child's face and knew who he loved and had to believe it. His eyes narrowed - a gaze shared by all Stilinski men - as he processed this news.

“A _werewolf_?!” he asked after the longest of moments, and that broke the dam.

Stiles exhaled and his voice shook with relief and pain.

“Look, okay, okay. Long conversation. Many conversations actually, sooo many questions, I get it. But if I’m going to save Derek, I need to do it now, _right_ now, and I need to be sure I know why I’m doing it. I _know_ why now. I love him. That’s the truth.” _Most of the truth, anyway._

The wound on his arm burned fiercely as they hugged. Such long fangs, so deep in his flesh, darkness and fire all through his body, again. He closed his eyes, just in case.

 _He won’t forgive this_.

***

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR’S NOTES:
> 
> This story borrows freely from several inspirations, including a poem from _Welcome to Night Vale_ , more prominent in drafts but now nearly gone; in its visual elements from the film _The Company of Wolves_ , from the Eagles’ “Hotel California”; from the old _The Outer Limits_ episode called “The Guests” for some of the tone; and of course all the wasted chances _Teen Wolf_ never took to explore the Hale family backstory. 
> 
> The following music was also influential:  
> “The Forest and the Huntsman's Theme” by George Fenton from _The Company of Wolves_  
>  “Pine Boxes” by Mouth of the Architect  
> “Goodbye” by Apparat (with Soap & Skin)  
> “Always Find Me Here” by Transit  
> “So Close” by Ólafur Arnalds (feat. Arnor Dan)  
> “My Most Meaningful Relationships Are With Dead People” by The Late Cord  
> “All the Better to Eat You With” by George Fenton


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